Bard PowerPort lawsuit: what the litigation is about

Thousands of patients allege that Bard implanted port catheters, including the PowerPort, can crack, fracture, migrate, harbor infection, or cause clots. The federal cases are consolidated before one judge in Arizona as MDL 3081. Two test trials have reached juries so far, one favoring Bard and one favoring the plaintiff, and more are scheduled.

A port was supposed to make treatment easier. For most patients it does exactly that: a small device placed under the skin of the chest, connected to a thin tube that runs into a large vein, so chemotherapy and blood draws no longer mean a new needle stick every visit.

Then something went wrong. An infection that put you back in the hospital. A scan that showed a piece of the tubing had broken loose and traveled. A clot. Surgery to take the device out, and treatment delayed while you recovered from a problem that had nothing to do with your original diagnosis.

If that happened to you or someone in your family, you have probably seen advertising about a Bard PowerPort lawsuit and wondered what is actually being alleged, and whether it has anything to do with your situation. Here is the plain version, updated for where things stand in October 2026.

What the lawsuits actually claim

The cases target implanted port catheters made by C.R. Bard, a company now owned by Becton, Dickinson and Company. The PowerPort line is the main device at issue, and other Bard implanted ports are named in claims as well.

Most of the lawsuits focus on catheter tubing made from a polyurethane compound containing barium sulfate. Plaintiffs allege that this material breaks down inside the body, becoming brittle and developing cracks, and that a cracked catheter can fracture, send fragments into the bloodstream, migrate out of position, harbor bacteria, or trigger clots. The litigation is not limited to that one material, though. Some cases involve Bard ports with silicone catheters, including the fracture case that reached a jury in September 2026.

The lawsuits also allege that the manufacturer knew about these risks and did not adequately warn patients or the doctors placing the devices.

Those are allegations. Bard and Becton Dickinson deny them. One jury has now sided with a plaintiff on the design and warning claims, but that verdict applies only to that plaintiff's case. Whether the companies are liable to anyone else has not been decided.

Where the litigation stands

Federal PowerPort cases are gathered in a multidistrict litigation, or MDL, which is a procedure that sends similar lawsuits from around the country to one judge for coordinated pretrial handling. Cases are not merged into a single claim. Each plaintiff keeps an individual case, and discovery, expert rulings, and early trials are handled together.

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation created MDL 3081, In re: Bard Implanted Port Catheter Products Liability Litigation, in August 2023, and assigned it to Judge David G. Campbell in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. More than 4,100 cases were pending as of the panel's October 2026 report, up from about 3,700 a month earlier, and new cases continue to be filed.

The MDL is in its bellwether phase. A bellwether is a test case: a small number of individual claims tried first so both sides learn how juries respond to the evidence. Two have been tried so far. A third, an infection case, is scheduled to begin in October 2026, with further trials set for December 2026 and February 2027.

No global settlement has been reached.

What the first two trials decided

The first trial was an infection case. In May 2026 the jury returned a verdict for the defense on failure to warn, failure to instruct, and consumer fraud claims, and deadlocked on whether the device was defectively designed. The plaintiff asked the court for a new trial, arguing the jury received improper instructions. That request was still undecided at the end of September.

The second trial was a fracture case. The plaintiff's catheter broke and a fragment traveled to her heart. On September 4, 2026, a unanimous jury found that the device was defectively designed and that Bard failed to adequately warn about its risks. The jury awarded compensatory damages, meaning money for the harm she suffered, and declined to award punitive damages, which are meant to punish a defendant. The court entered judgment on September 10.

That verdict is not final in the practical sense. After a verdict of this kind, the losing side typically files post-trial motions and may appeal, a process that often takes a year or more and can reduce, overturn, or send a verdict back for a new trial.

What the results mean for your claim

The two trials came out differently, and they involved different injuries. That is part of why the bellwether program tests injury types separately: an infection claim and a fracture claim rest on different evidence and different medical questions.

Two trials are a small sample, and a bellwether verdict binds only the plaintiff whose case was tried. It does not decide anyone else's claim, it does not create a payment program, and it does not close the litigation. Both sides treat these results as information about how the remaining cases might be valued.

What still decides your own situation is the same as before: which device you had, what happened to you, what your records show, and the filing deadline in your state.

Was the Bard PowerPort recalled?

This is where a lot of advertising gets sloppy, so precision matters.

There has been no recall of Bard PowerPort devices for the catheter cracking and fracturing that the lawsuits are about. Plaintiffs are suing over a material and design problem that no FDA action has addressed.

A Class 2 recall of certain PowerPort products does exist in the FDA database, recall number Z-1570-2020. Bard Peripheral Vascular initiated it on October 1, 2019, and it was terminated in February 2022. It covered 178 catheters across three specific product codes, and the reason was that some kits could contain a tunneler with the wrong size barb tip, which could make the implant procedure take longer. That is a packaging and component issue affecting a small, identified batch. It is not the fracture allegation.

None of this affects whether a patient can file. Eligibility rests on what device was implanted and what happened afterward, not on whether a recall exists.

Who may qualify

Claims generally involve patients who had a port catheter placed completely beneath the skin, not a PICC line or a dialysis catheter that exits the body, and who then experienced a serious complication such as:

• Catheter fracture or breakage, including fragments that embedded or traveled
• Migration or dislodgement of the catheter, or the port eroding through the skin
• Bloodstream infection or sepsis, particularly beginning well after the implant surgery
• Blood clots, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, or stroke
• Tissue death or infection in the pocket around the port

Cases are strongest when the complication required the device to be removed or led to emergency treatment, and most current claims involve implants from roughly 2013 onward.

Not knowing the brand of your device is normal and is not a reason to skip a review. The manufacturer and model appear in the operative report, and an attorney can help obtain those records.

What records matter most

If you are gathering paperwork, these are the documents that do the work:

• The operative or implant report from the placement surgery, which identifies the device
• The removal or revision surgery report, if the port came out
• Imaging showing a fracture, a fragment, migration, or a clot
• Hospital and infectious disease records if you were admitted for an infection
• Dates, particularly the implant date and the date the problem first appeared

Missing pieces are not fatal. Hospitals hold most of this, and requesting records is a routine part of the process.

What it costs, and whether you end up in a courtroom

Attorneys handling these cases work on a contingency fee, meaning the fee comes out of any recovery rather than from you up front. If a case produces nothing, there is no attorney fee.

Filing deadlines are set by each state's statute of limitations, the law that caps how long after an injury a claim can be brought. These vary by state and by the circumstances of the injury, and once the window closes it does not reopen. That is the practical reason not to sit on it, and it has nothing to do with pressure to decide today.

As for court, only a handful of MDL cases are ever tried. Judge Campbell has said that cases not resolved after the bellwether trials will be transferred back to their home districts. Most plaintiffs in a litigation this size never testify in front of a jury.

What to do now

Get the implant date and the hospital where the port was placed. Write down what happened, in order, in whatever detail you remember. Then have someone check whether the situation fits the current claim criteria.

Nobody can tell you in advance what a claim will produce. What a review can tell you is whether your circumstances match what the litigation covers, and how much time you have left to act on it.

Disclaimer: This article is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Injury Advocate Group is an advertising service, not a law firm. Litigation status changes; eligibility can only be confirmed through a case review with an attorney.