Bard PowerPort Lawsuit Update: Judge Strikes Some Bard Defenses but Keeps Catheter-Placement Theory for Trial

The latest Bard PowerPort lawsuit update is a split pretrial ruling: the judge overseeing MDL 3081 granted a bellwether plaintiff summary judgment on certain of C.R. Bard's affirmative defenses, but refused to stop Bard from telling the jury that catheter placement, rather than a defect in the device, caused her blood clot, Mealey's reported on November 9, 2026. The ruling trims Bard's toolkit for the December 1 thrombosis trial in Phoenix without touching its central causation defense, which is where the first blood-clot bellwether in the litigation is now likely to be won or lost.

The order is the third significant pretrial ruling in the same case in under a month. It follows an October 16 order limiting what a defense expert may say about the plaintiff's own knowledge of the device's risks, and an October 26 order denying Bard's motion for summary judgment on design defect and failure to warn. Read together, they show the shape of the trial the jury will see: design and warnings claims intact, some of Bard's pleaded defenses gone, and the fight concentrated on whether a degraded catheter, or the ordinary risks of a central line placed in a cancer patient, caused the clot.

This article explains what the ruling decided, what it left open, why striking affirmative defenses does not remove an alternative-cause theory, how Missouri law is likely to frame the defenses at stake, and what the result means for claimants' counsel, defense counsel and funders holding Bard port inventory.

What is the latest Bard PowerPort lawsuit update?

On November 9, 2026, Mealey's reported that the Arizona federal judge presiding over In re Bard Implanted Port Catheter Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3081, had ruled on a bellwether plaintiff's motion for partial summary judgment. The court granted the motion as to certain affirmative defenses pleaded by Bard and its parent, Becton Dickinson. It denied the plaintiff's request to exclude, or otherwise bar, evidence that the placement of the catheter, rather than an alleged defect, caused her thrombosis.

The judge is David G. Campbell of the District of Arizona, who has presided over the Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) since the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) centralized the port catheter cases in Phoenix in August 2023. The publicly available summary of the ruling does not name the plaintiff, list the defenses that were struck, or give the order's docket entry. This article does not guess at any of those details.

The facts that are visible in the summary, a woman's thrombosis claim in a bellwether case, match Hicks v. Bard, No. 2:23-cv-01703, the Missouri X-Port case the court's bellwether order classified as a polyurethane thrombus case and that is set to open on December 1, 2026. No other publicly reported bellwether on the near-term trial calendar is a thrombosis case. The identification is an inference from the reporting, not a confirmed fact, and it should be checked against the docket before it is relied on.

What is confirmed is the direction of the ruling. For the plaintiff, it removes at least some defenses on which Bard would have carried the burden of proof at trial. For Bard, it preserves the alternative-causation case that has been the backbone of its defense across the bellwether program, and that two juries in infection cases have already accepted.

What did the judge rule on Bard's affirmative defenses in the PowerPort bellwether?

The court granted the plaintiff summary judgment on "certain affirmative defenses," in Mealey's words. That is a partial ruling. It means that, for the defenses covered, the court found the record did not contain enough evidence for a reasonable jury to find in Bard's favor, so those defenses will not be submitted to the jury.

A plaintiff can move for summary judgment against a defense, not only against a whole claim. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(a) allows a party to seek summary judgment on "each claim or defense — or the part of each claim or defense," and the 2010 advisory committee note explains that the language was added to make clear that summary judgment can be sought on a single defense or part of one. Plaintiffs in device litigation use the tool routinely before trial to clear out defenses that were pleaded in the answer, often years earlier and in boilerplate form, but never developed in discovery.

The logic turns on the burden of proof. An affirmative defense is a matter on which the defendant bears the burden: it is the defendant's job to plead it and to prove it. When the plaintiff moves for summary judgment on such a defense and points to the absence of evidence supporting it, the defendant must come forward with specific evidence creating a genuine dispute. If it cannot, the defense falls away. The ruling reported on November 9 means Bard could not meet that burden on at least some of the defenses it pleaded.

Which defenses fell matters, and the public reporting does not say. In device cases tried under state product liability law, the defenses most often pleaded and then challenged in this way include plaintiff comparative fault, assumption of the risk, misuse, failure to mitigate damages, the Statute of Limitations, the Statute of Repose, state-of-the-art defenses and, in some states, defenses premised on regulatory compliance. Some of those do not fit a case like Hicks at all. A cancer patient who receives a surgically implanted port does not "use" the catheter in the way a consumer uses a ladder or a power tool, and the patient does not choose its placement, flush schedule or tip position. Defenses built on the plaintiff's own conduct are therefore natural candidates for summary judgment in a port case, but the order has not been reported in enough detail to say whether they were the ones the court struck.

The limitations defense is a different matter. In Lattanzio, Bard pressed a limitations argument under Florida law on an August 2013 implant, and the court denied Bard's summary judgment motion on September 25, 2026. Hicks involves a February 2021 implant and a June 2023 complaint, which leaves little room for a limitations defense under Missouri's general five-year period for personal injury, but that too is analysis, not a reported holding.

Can Bard argue that catheter placement caused the blood clot?

Yes. The court declined to bar Bard from presenting evidence that the catheter's placement, rather than a device defect, caused the plaintiff's thrombosis. Bard will be able to put that theory in front of the jury at trial, subject to the ordinary rules of evidence and to any limits the court sets on particular witnesses.

Catheter placement is a recognized clinical variable in catheter-associated thrombosis. Where the catheter enters the venous system, which vein is used, how the catheter is tunneled and where its tip comes to rest relative to the junction of the superior vena cava and the right atrium are all discussed in the clinical literature as factors bearing on clot risk. A catheter tip that sits too high in the vein, for example, is commonly described as more prone to thrombotic complications than one positioned near the cavoatrial junction. Patient factors are layered on top: active cancer, chemotherapy, infection and immobility each raise clotting risk independently of the device.

For Bard, the placement theory does two things. It offers the jury a concrete, non-defect explanation for the clot that does not depend on attacking the plaintiff, and it shifts attention away from the catheter's formulation, the barium sulfate content at the center of the plaintiffs' design theory, toward the implanting procedure, which Bard did not perform. For the plaintiff, the theory is the main obstacle between a triable design claim and a verdict. Having survived Bard's summary judgment motion on design and warnings on October 26, the plaintiff still has to persuade the jury that the defect, not the placement, caused the clot.

How Bard will prove the theory has not been reported. The usual sources are the implanting physician's operative note, post-placement imaging that documents tip position, later imaging of the clot, and testimony from interventional radiology or vascular experts. The plaintiff, in turn, will rely on explant analysis of the removed catheter and on the plaintiffs' experts' account of how a degraded polyurethane surface promotes thrombus formation. If imaging places the clot along a segment of catheter that shows surface degradation at explant, the plaintiff has a physical link the placement theory must explain away; if the clot is located where tip position alone would predict it, the defense theory becomes much stronger.

What is the difference between an affirmative defense and alternative-cause evidence?

The ruling's two halves are consistent because the two things it addressed are legally different. An affirmative defense is a reason the defendant should not be liable, or should be liable for less, even if the plaintiff proves every element of the claim; the defendant bears the burden of proving it. Alternative-cause evidence is not a defense in that sense at all. It is evidence offered to rebut an element the plaintiff must prove, causation, and the burden on causation remains with the plaintiff throughout.

That distinction explains why striking defenses and admitting alternative-cause evidence can happen in the same order. Bard does not need to prove that placement caused the clot. It needs only to give the jury enough reason to doubt that the defect did. Courts generally allow a defendant to offer evidence of other possible causes for exactly that purpose, while sometimes limiting how speculative that evidence may be or requiring that an expert's alternative-cause opinion rest on a reliable method under Rule 702.

Question	Affirmative defense (e.g., comparative fault, limitations)	Alternative-cause evidence (e.g., catheter placement)
What it attacks	Liability or damages even if the claim is proved	The plaintiff's proof of Specific Causation
Who bears the burden	Defendant must plead and prove it	Plaintiff must prove causation; defendant need only create doubt
How a plaintiff challenges it	Rule 56 motion showing no evidence supports the defense	Rule 702 motion or motion in limine to exclude unreliable or speculative opinions
Effect if the plaintiff wins	Defense is not submitted to the jury	Evidence is excluded or narrowed
Result in the November 9 ruling	Certain defenses struck on summary judgment	Bard not barred from presenting placement evidence
Jury instruction	Separate verdict question or reduction (e.g., percentage of fault)	No separate question; goes to whether plaintiff proved causation

The practical upshot is that the plaintiff's partial win changes the verdict form more than it changes the trial narrative. The jury will probably not be asked to assign any percentage of fault to the plaintiff on the defenses struck, and some defense themes will be off the table. But the jury will still hear a full causation contest, and on that contest the plaintiff carries the burden.

Which defenses could be at stake under Missouri law?

The governing law in Hicks has not been reported. Hicks is a Missouri resident who was implanted in Missouri, and in an MDL a transferee court applies the choice-of-law rules that the originating court would apply. Missouri substantive law is the likely result. If it applies, two Missouri statutes shape the affirmative defenses Bard could have pleaded.

Comparative fault. Section 537.765 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri makes comparative fault an affirmative defense in product liability claims under section 537.760. Fault on the plaintiff's part does not bar recovery; it reduces damages in proportion to the fault the jury assigns. The statute defines the plaintiff's "fault" narrowly, through a closed list that includes failing to use the product as the manufacturer reasonably anticipated, using it for a purpose the manufacturer did not intend, using it with knowledge of a danger and voluntarily and unreasonably exposing oneself to that danger, unreasonably failing to appreciate the danger, failing to take precautions a reasonably careful user would take, and failing to mitigate damages.

Most of those categories assume a user who handles the product. In an implanted port case, the defense typically has to find fault in what the patient did or failed to do after implantation: missed follow-up, ignored symptoms, or delayed treatment of a clot. If the record did not support any of those, a plaintiff's motion for summary judgment on comparative fault would have been straightforward. Whether that is what happened in Hicks is not known.

The October 16 order is relevant here. As described by one plaintiff-side tracker, Judge Campbell limited a defense expert who had been offered to testify about the plaintiff's knowledge of the risks and benefits of her port, finding that the expert could not have gathered that information from the plaintiff's testimony or other evidence. The tracker did not name the plaintiff and placed the order in a December 2026 trial; Hicks is the December trial. Testimony about a plaintiff's knowledge of risk is the kind of evidence a defendant would need to support the knowing-exposure categories in section 537.765. If that testimony is gone, the related defenses would have had little left to stand on.

State of the art. Section 537.764 makes "state of the art," meaning that the dangerous nature of the product was not known and could not reasonably be discovered when it was placed into commerce, a complete defense, but only to a strict liability Failure to Warn claim. It does not apply to design defect or negligence claims. Bard's position throughout the litigation has been that its ports are safe and effective when used as intended, not that their risks were undiscoverable, so the significance of a state-of-the-art defense in Hicks, and whether it survived, is unclear from the public record.

What is not an affirmative defense under Missouri practice. The Learned Intermediary Doctrine, under which a device maker's duty to warn runs to the implanting physician rather than to the patient, is generally treated as part of the plaintiff's warnings case, not as a defense Bard must prove. The same is true of causation. Striking Bard's affirmative defenses therefore leaves its two strongest trial themes, that the physicians knew the risk of catheter-associated thrombosis and that something other than the catheter's formulation caused this clot, fully available.

How the ruling fits the October rulings in Hicks

The November 9 ruling is the last piece of a pretrial sequence that began in late September, when Judge Campbell entered First Amended Case Management Order 50 setting Hicks for trial beginning December 1.

Date	Ruling or event	Effect at trial
September 24, 2026	First Amended CMO 50 sets Hicks for trial from December 1	Fourth bellwether, first thrombus trial
October 16, 2026	Order limiting a defense expert's testimony on the plaintiff's knowledge of the port's risks and benefits (as reported; plaintiff not named)	Narrows evidence of plaintiff's own risk awareness
October 26, 2026	Bard's summary judgment motion denied; feasible alternative design identified; jury question on warnings (HarrisMartin)	Design Defect and failure to warn go to the jury
October 26, 2026	Final pretrial conference	Exhibit and witness lists set
Reported November 9, 2026	Plaintiff granted summary judgment on certain affirmative defenses; Bard may present catheter-placement causation evidence (Mealey's)	Fewer defenses on verdict form; causation contest preserved
December 1, 2026	Trial set to open in Phoenix	Window reported as running to December 18 or December 21

Each ruling cut in the same direction on liability theories and in the opposite direction on causation. The plaintiff has won every pretrial fight about whether her claims and Bard's defenses are legally triable. Bard has kept every tool it needs to argue that the injury was not caused by a defect. That is the same pattern that produced defense results in Cook and Lattanzio: the court let the claims reach the jury, and the jury was not persuaded on causation or warnings.

The pattern is also consistent with how Judge Campbell has handled expert evidence in the MDL. In an April 2026 ruling reported by Mealey's, the court allowed a plaintiffs' scientist to offer most of her opinions on design defects while limiting her opinions on whether a specific defect caused infection risk. The court has been willing to let the design theory be tried and equally willing to leave causation to be contested at trial with evidence on both sides.

What is the Bard PowerPort bellwether record so far?

The record entering Hicks is two defense results and one plaintiff verdict, divided along the injury line.

Bellwether	Case	Injury track	Verdict date	Outcome	Bard's main causation theme
1st	Cook v. Becton Dickinson	Infection (polyurethane)	May 2026	For Bard on failure to warn, failure to instruct and consumer fraud; jury hung on design defect	Infection from access and handling, not catheter surface
2nd	Divelbliss v. Becton Dickinson	Fracture and fragment migration	September 4, 2026	$40 million compensatory for plaintiff; no fraudulent concealment; no Punitive Damages; judgment entered September 10	Limited; fracture causation largely undisputed
3rd	Lattanzio v. Becton Dickinson	Infection; August 2013 implant; Florida law	October 30, 2026	Defense verdict; bifurcated punitive phase not reached	Implantation technique, catheter care, medical history
4th	Hicks v. Bard	Thrombus (polyurethane), with early surgical-site infection	Trial set December 1, 2026	Bard summary judgment denied October 26; certain Bard defenses struck (reported November 9)	Catheter placement and baseline cancer-related clot risk
5th	Sorensen v. Bard	Not publicly characterized in detail	Trial set February 2, 2027	Pending	Not reported

Bard moved on October 8, 2026 for a new trial in Divelbliss, arguing, in HarrisMartin's account, that plaintiff's counsel "weaponized" expert compensation to obtain a "manifestly excessive" award. No ruling on that motion has been reported. A decision vacating or reducing the $40 million verdict before December 1 would leave the plaintiffs entering Hicks without an intact win.

The table shows why the November 9 ruling matters more than its procedural label suggests. The only plaintiff verdict came in the injury track where causation was close to self-proving. The two defense results came in infection cases, where Bard offered the jury a clinical alternative explanation. Hicks is the first trial in which a thrombosis plaintiff will face the same kind of alternative explanation, and the court has now confirmed that Bard may offer it.

When is the next Bard PowerPort bellwether trial?

The next Bard PowerPort bellwether trial is Hicks v. Bard, set to open on December 1, 2026 before Judge Campbell in Phoenix. Trackers report a trial window running through December 18 or December 21. The fifth bellwether, Sorensen, is set to begin on February 2, 2027.

One intake page lists a February 7, 2027 date for the "fourth" bellwether. Four other sources, including trackers citing First Amended CMO 50, give December 1 for Hicks, and no report of a continuance has been found. The February 7 reference appears to be stale or to describe the fifth trial.

Hicks received a Bard X-Port with a ChronoFlex polyurethane catheter on February 21, 2021 for breast cancer chemotherapy, according to HarrisMartin. According to AboutLawsuits' summary of her complaint, she developed neutropenia and a staphylococcal infection traced to the surgical site within a month of implant, later developed a blood clot, and had the port removed after two surgeries. That history gives both sides material. For the plaintiff, it is a device that failed in more than one way in the same patient. For Bard, an early surgical-site infection in a neutropenic chemotherapy patient and a later clot in a cancer patient are each events with well-known causes other than the catheter's formulation, and catheter placement now joins that list.

How many Bard PowerPort lawsuits are pending?

The JPML's pending-MDL report dated November 2, 2026 listed 4,345 pending actions in MDL 3081, up from 4,140 in the October 1 report, an increase of 205 in one month. The docket was about 2,700 cases at the start of February 2026, so it has grown by well over half during the bellwether year, with intake continuing after the first defense verdict in May.

The JPML count covers federal cases only. It does not include state-court filings or unfiled claims held under Tolling Agreement arrangements, and it does not break the docket down by injury. That breakdown, how many fracture, infection and thrombus claims the MDL contains, is the number that will decide what the Hicks result is worth across the inventory, and it has not been published.

Is there a Bard PowerPort settlement?

No. As of November 10, 2026 there is no Global Settlement, no Settlement Matrix, no Claims Administrator and no registration deadline in MDL 3081. Dollar ranges on intake and "settlement amount" pages, which run from five figures to seven figures per case depending on the site, are projections, not terms any party has agreed. Becton Dickinson's 2026 quarterly reports describe mass tort litigation generally and state that the company cannot always estimate a range of loss, but the excerpts reviewed for this article do not disclose a port-specific accrual.

The November 9 ruling feeds into settlement only through the trial it shapes. A plaintiff verdict in a thrombosis case, after Bard was allowed to present its placement theory, would show that the design case can overcome a credible alternative-cause defense outside the fracture track. A defense verdict would leave the plaintiffs at 1-3, with their only win in the injury track where causation was easiest, and would strengthen the case for valuing fracture claims separately from the rest of the docket.

Does the ruling affect other Bard PowerPort lawsuits?

Not directly. A summary judgment ruling in a bellwether case decides only that case, and evidentiary rulings on alternative causation are inherently case-specific: whether placement evidence is admissible in another plaintiff's trial will depend on that plaintiff's imaging, operative records and expert disclosures.

The indirect effects are real. The ruling signals how Judge Campbell is likely to treat two recurring motions across the docket. Plaintiffs can expect that boilerplate defenses unsupported by discovery will be struck if challenged. Defendants can expect that a properly supported alternative-cause theory will reach the jury. Those signals matter both for any remaining bellwethers and for the pretrial rulings Judge Campbell will make before cases are remanded to their home districts.

For thrombosis claims in particular, Hicks will produce the first jury valuation. Until now, thrombus claims have been priced by analogy to infection and fracture results. After December, they will have a data point of their own, produced in a trial in which the defense's principal causation theory was available in full.

What it means for claimants' counsel, defense counsel and funders

For claimants' counsel. The ruling confirms that winning motions against Bard's pleaded defenses will not shorten the causation fight. In thrombus files, the evidence that will matter is the evidence that answers a placement theory: post-implant imaging documenting tip position; any record that the tip was repositioned or that the catheter was revised; imaging that localizes the clot relative to the catheter; explant pathology on the removed catheter; and treating-physician testimony on whether placement was routine. Files where tip position was documented as appropriate and the clot formed along a degraded segment are stronger than files where placement was revised or undocumented. Counsel holding mixed inventories may also want to audit answers in their own cases for the same affirmative defenses, since the court has now shown it will strike those Bard cannot support with evidence.

For defense counsel. The ruling preserves the theme that won Cook and Lattanzio and moves it into a new injury track. The tactical cost is that, without some affirmative defenses, the verdict form may give the jury fewer ways to split the difference; a jury that finds causation will likely not be able to reduce the award by assigning fault to the plaintiff on any defense the court struck. The alternative-cause case therefore has to work as an all-or-nothing causation argument. How the court instructs the jury on alternative causation, and how much of the placement evidence comes in through treating physicians rather than retained experts, will be worth watching in the final pretrial filings.

For funders and portfolio buyers. Hicks is the next pricing event, and the November 9 ruling raises the bar for the plaintiffs: the first thrombus verdict will come from a trial in which Bard's best causation defense was available. A plaintiff verdict under those conditions would be a stronger signal for thrombus claims than one obtained over a narrowed defense. Diligence on Bard port portfolios should break out thrombus files and test each against the placement-evidence checklist above. The Divelbliss post-trial ruling and the February Sorensen trial are the other near-term variables.

For all sides. Three pretrial rulings in under four weeks in a single bellwether reflect a court that is managing the trial calendar tightly and resolving disputes on the merits rather than letting them carry into trial. The parties should expect the same treatment in Sorensen.

Frequently asked questions

What is the latest Bard PowerPort lawsuit update?

On November 9, 2026, Mealey's reported that Judge David G. Campbell granted a bellwether plaintiff summary judgment on certain of Bard's affirmative defenses in MDL 3081, while allowing Bard to present evidence that catheter placement, not a defect, caused her thrombosis. The facts match Hicks v. Bard, the thrombosis bellwether set for trial on December 1, 2026.

Can Bard argue that catheter placement caused the plaintiff's blood clot?

Yes. The court declined to bar Bard from presenting evidence that the catheter's placement caused the thrombosis. Because that evidence attacks causation, which the plaintiff must prove, it survives even though some of Bard's affirmative defenses were struck.

Which of Bard's affirmative defenses were struck?

The public summary of the ruling does not list them. In a Missouri implanted-device case, defenses based on the plaintiff's own conduct, such as comparative fault under section 537.765, are common targets, and an October 16 order had already limited defense expert testimony on the plaintiff's knowledge of the port's risks, but the specific defenses struck have not been reported.

When is the next Bard PowerPort trial?

Hicks v. Bard is set to begin on December 1, 2026 in Phoenix, with a window reported to run through December 18 or 21. The fifth bellwether, Sorensen, is set for February 2, 2027.

How many Bard PowerPort lawsuits are there?

The JPML listed 4,345 pending actions in MDL 3081 in its November 2, 2026 report, up 205 from October 1. There is no global settlement.