Bard Powerport: $40 Million Verdict Puts Design Defect At The Center Of The MDL
On September 10, 2026, a federal jury in the District of Arizona returned a $40 million compensatory-damages verdict for Kimberly Divelbliss in the second bellwether trial arising from the Bard implanted-port litigation. It is the first plaintiff verdict in MDL No. 3081 and marks the first time a jury has returned a verdict finding liability on the alleged design-defect theory at issue in the litigation.1 The result is significant, but its importance extends beyond the size of the award.
The first bellwether trial, Cook v. Becton, Dickinson and Company, produced a partial defense verdict and a hung jury on the design-defect issue.2 The Divelbliss verdict therefore gives the parties their first completed jury determination concerning whether the PowerPort’s alleged design defect can support liability.
This does not mean the remaining cases are decided. Bellwether verdicts are not binding adjudications of the claims of other MDL plaintiffs. But they can provide both sides with meaningful information about how juries evaluate recurring liability theories, expert testimony, medical evidence, and damages.
From MDL Consolidation to the Bellwether Process
The Bard implanted-port litigation was centralized by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in August 2023. The Panel transferred the litigation to the District of Arizona for coordinated pretrial proceedings before Judge David G. Campbell.3
The court subsequently established a bellwether process designed to identify representative cases for early trial proceedings. In Case Management Order No. 35, the court selected six cases for the first bellwether group, including the Divelbliss action.4 The court later established the order in which the bellwether trials would proceed, placing Robert Cook first and Kimberly Divelbliss fourth in the sequence.5
The importance of that process is straightforward. In an MDL involving thousands of individual claims, the parties need actual trial results, not merely pleadings and expert reports, to evaluate how recurring issues may fare before juries.
The First Bellwether Left the Central Question Unanswered
The first bellwether trial did not resolve the central design-defect question. That matters because the Bard litigation involves multiple theories of alleged injury and liability. A defense verdict on one theory does not necessarily answer whether a different theory will succeed in another case. The Cook result consequently left the parties without a plaintiff-side jury determination on the alleged design defect. The Divelbliss trial changed that.
The Divelbliss Verdict
According to the reported verdict, the nine-person jury found unanimously in favor of Divelbliss on her strict-liability and negligent design-defect claims and on her strict-liability and negligent failure-to-warn claims. The jury rejected the fraudulent-concealment claim and did not award punitive damages.6 The jury awarded $40 million in compensatory damages.7
That distinction is important. The award is not a punitive-damages award, and the verdict should not be characterized as though the jury imposed $40 million as punishment. The reported verdict instead represents the jury’s determination of compensatory damages arising from the injuries presented at trial.
The Injury Behind the Verdict
Divelbliss was implanted with a Bard PowerPort in 2017. According to the plaintiff’s trial account, approximately two years later, the catheter fractured and a portion of it migrated into her heart. The fragment required surgical removal, and the plaintiff subsequently experienced serious cardiac complications.8
The facts made Divelbliss materially different from Cook. Where Cook involved an infection-related claim, Divelbliss placed the alleged catheter-fracture and migration theory directly before the jury. That distinction is likely to matter as the MDL progresses because future cases may involve substantially different injury mechanisms, medical histories, causation questions, and damages evidence.
Why the Design-Defect Finding Matters
The most consequential aspect of the verdict may not be the $40 million figure. It may be the jury’s treatment of the design-defect theory itself.
Before Divelbliss, the parties had no plaintiff verdict establishing that the alleged PowerPort design could support liability in an individual trial. The first bellwether had ended without a unanimous determination on that issue.
The verdict does not establish liability in the remaining MDL cases. Each plaintiff must still establish the elements applicable to his or her claims, including causation and damages. But the result provides plaintiffs with a concrete jury-tested result supporting the theory that the device’s alleged design was defective. For defendants, the verdict provides equally important information, which is a jury confronted with the evidence found the design-defect theory persuasive in this particular case.
The Alternative-Design Evidence
A significant part of the plaintiffs’ presentation reportedly concerned the availability and cost of an alternative catheter material. Plaintiffs argued that a potentially stronger material could have increased the cost of the device by approximately 47 cents.
The importance of the figure was not the amount itself. Rather, it formed part of plaintiffs’ broader argument that Bard allegedly had information concerning catheter fracture risks, had access to an alternative design, and nevertheless did not adopt it.
That type of evidence can be particularly significant in a design-defect case because it gives a jury a concrete framework for evaluating the alleged balance between product safety and manufacturing considerations.
But it is important to identify this as plaintiffs’ trial theory, rather than state it as an established historical fact unless the underlying trial record supports the proposition.
FDA Clearance Does Not End the Product-Liability Analysis
The regulatory history of the PowerPort has also featured in the litigation. FDA records show that PowerPort devices have been cleared through the 510(k) premarket notification process, which involves a determination of substantial equivalence to a legally marketed predicate device. That regulatory history should be described carefully.
A 510(k) clearance is not the same thing as a judicial finding that a product is safe or non-defective. Nor does the existence of FDA clearance, standing alone, resolve the state-law product-liability questions presented in an individual lawsuit. Indeed, the District of Arizona has separately addressed the evidentiary question of how FDA-related evidence may be presented in the litigation.9
For that reason, the article should distinguish between FDA regulatory clearance and civil liability under applicable product-liability law.
What the Verdict Means for Settlement Discussions
The Divelbliss verdict also changes the information available to the parties during settlement discussions. Before this trial, the defense could point to the Cook result and the absence of a plaintiff verdict on the design-defect theory. Plaintiffs, in turn, could point to the unresolved nature of that issue.
That landscape is different now. There is a plaintiff verdict and a $40 million compensatory-damages award. And there is a jury determination finding liability on the alleged design-defect and failure-to-warn theories. That does not establish a settlement value for the remaining cases.
The individual circumstances of each plaintiff remain critical, including the alleged injury, medical history, device history, causation evidence, damages, and applicable law. But Divelbliss is now an important data point that neither side had before.
What Happens Next?
The verdict does not conclude with MDL No. 3081. The court has already established additional bellwether proceedings. The current case-management schedule identifies additional trials involving other plaintiffs, including cases scheduled for October and December 2026 and February 2027.10 Those trials may produce different results.
That is one of the principal purposes of the bellwether process, which is to generate a body of trial information across different factual circumstances rather than relying on a single plaintiff’s experience.
The Divelbliss verdict is therefore best understood as the beginning of a new phase of the litigation, not the end of it.
The Bottom Line: From “What Will the Jury Decide?” to “What Happens After the Verdict?”
The Bard PowerPort litigation has reached an important turning point. The first bellwether trial left the central design-defect question unresolved. The second has now produced a plaintiff verdict.
In Divelbliss, a federal jury found liability on the alleged design-defect and failure-to-warn theories and awarded $40 million in compensatory damages.11
The verdict does not bind the remaining plaintiffs. It does not establish a global settlement. And it remains subject to the ordinary post-trial and appellate processes available in federal civil litigation. But it gives the parties something they did not have before, which is a jury-tested finding supporting the core design-defect theory at the heart of a significant portion of the Bard PowerPort litigation. For the thousands of remaining cases, that may ultimately prove more important than the headline $40 million figure.