Bard PowerPort lawsuit: what the litigation is about

Thousands of patients allege that Bard PowerPort implanted port catheters were made with a material that cracks inside the body, letting the catheter fracture, migrate, harbor infection, or cause clots. The federal cases are consolidated before one judge in Arizona as MDL 3081, which is now trying its first test cases.

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.

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.

Plaintiffs allege that the catheter tubing, made from a polyurethane compound containing barium sulfate, breaks down inside the body. Their claim is that the material becomes brittle and develops cracks, and that a cracked catheter can fracture, send fragments into the bloodstream, migrate out of position, harbor bacteria, or trigger clots. 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, not findings. Bard and Becton Dickinson deny them, and no court has determined that the PowerPort is defective. The point of the litigation is to answer that question.

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 3,500 cases were pending as of the panel's July 2026 report, and the litigation continues to accept new filings.

The MDL is now 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. A second trial is scheduled to begin on August 18, 2026, with further trials set for October and December 2026 and February 2027.

What the first trial decided, and what it did not

The first bellwether ended in May 2026 with a verdict for the defense on failure to warn, failure to instruct, and consumer fraud claims, while the jury deadlocked on whether the device was defectively designed. The plaintiff has asked the court for a new trial, arguing the jury received improper instructions, and that request is still pending.

Two things follow from that, and they pull in different directions. The defense won the claims the jury decided, which matters. But the central design question, the one that most of the pending cases turn on, was left unresolved rather than rejected.

A bellwether verdict binds only the plaintiff whose case was tried. It does not decide anyone else's claim and it does not close the litigation. Both sides read these results as information about how the remaining cases might be valued.

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.