Discovery rule saves complaint

Trial Notebook

By Steven P. Garmisa

Hoey & Farina

Posted October 28, 2021 11:23 AM

Patricia Stark relied on the discovery rule to avoid the two-year Illinois statute of limitations when she sued Ethicon Inc. and its parent, Johnson & Johnson, in 2018 for an allegedly defective product that a surgeon implanted in 2007 to treat her urinary incontinence. Based on evidence that doctors told Stark — in 2008 and 2015 — that synthetic mesh in Ethicon’s TVT-Obturator sling device had eroded and become embedded in her urethral wall, a federal judge in Chicago granted the defendants’ request for summary …

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