Cook Medical IVC Filter Lawsuit: Settlements and Bellwether Trials

The Cook Medical IVC filter lawsuit is an active multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, where roughly 6,562 cases remain pending as of May 2026 out of more than 11,400 filed. No global settlement covers all claims. Cook is negotiating case-by-case under a court-appointed mediator, has agreed to “major settlement terms” for one group of cases in October 2025, and is preparing the first bellwether trials involving its Günther Tulip filter.¹²

Where the Litigation Stands in 2026

The consolidated case is In Re: Cook Medical, Inc., IVC Filters Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2570. It was created in October 2014 when the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation rejected Cook’s argument that differences among filter models and plaintiffs made consolidation inappropriate, and centralized the cases before Judge Richard L. Young.³ Magistrate Judge Tim A. Baker was appointed in 2025 as a settlement mediator to run confidential evaluations of individual claims.⁴

Between January 2025 and May 2026, about 1,018 cases were resolved through settlements and other dispositions.² The remainder are moving through a categorization process the court ordered in April 2025, in which parties sort active cases by injury type and submit competing valuations for each category.⁵

What Plaintiffs Allege

The lawsuits center on Cook’s Günther Tulip and Celect retrievable IVC filters, small metal devices placed in the inferior vena cava to catch blood clots before they reach the lungs. Both have been on the market since 1997.⁶

The master complaint alleges the filters are unreasonably dangerous because they:

lack the structural strength to withstand normal forces inside a blood vessel, leading to fracture;
have foreseeable risks that outweigh their benefits when safer alternative designs existed;
are made of “conichrome,” which Cook promoted as reducing fracture risk in what plaintiffs call a misleading way;
can become embedded in the vessel wall through endothelialization, making retrieval difficult or impossible.⁷

The injuries claimed include filter fracture and migration, perforation of the vein wall and surrounding organs, damage to the heart or lungs, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, internal bleeding, chronic pain, and death.⁸ The legal theories fall into five buckets: strict liability for design defect, strict liability for failure to warn, negligence in design, testing, and marketing, negligence per se for alleged violations of federal food and drug laws, and breach of express warranty.⁷

A November 2024 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, drawn from previously sealed MDL documents, concluded that patient deaths and adverse events in Celect’s clinical trial had been misreported to FDA reviewers and inaccurately represented in medical literature and device labeling. The authors also found the trial protocol used lower sensitivity thresholds for detecting perforation than professional medical societies recommend.⁹

Cook’s defense has leaned on two arguments: that the filters were cleared through the FDA’s 510(k) process and met federal standards, and that the learned intermediary doctrine limited its warning duty to physicians. Courts in most jurisdictions treat federal compliance as a floor rather than a shield from tort liability.¹⁰

Settlement Values and Payouts

There is no announced global settlement fund. In October 2025, court filings described “major settlement terms” reached between Cook and plaintiffs’ counsel for a group of active cases, but the agreement does not cover all pending claims, and the dollar amounts are not public.²

Confidential individual settlements reportedly range from five to seven figures depending on injury. Litigation analysis puts the estimated average value for cases with documented serious complications between $150,000 and $300,000. The separate IVC filter litigation against C.R. Bard reached a $1.6 billion global settlement in 2024, which analysts have described as adding pressure on Cook to resolve its cases.¹¹

Bellwether Trials So Far

Bellwether trials in the MDL have produced a mixed record. Cook won the first bellwether, Hill v. Cook Medical, when a jury in 2017 found the plaintiff had not proven the filter was defective.¹² Cook also won summary judgment in Gage v. Cook.¹³

Plaintiffs then won two. In May 2018, a Texas jury awarded Jeff Pavlock $1.2 million after finding Cook knew of Celect’s dangers before FDA clearance. In February 2019, an Indianapolis jury awarded Tonya Brand $3 million, finding the filter was defective and dangerous.⁵ Judge Young vacated the Brand verdict in January 2020, finding that improperly admitted evidence had tainted the trial, and ordered a new trial.¹³

Cook has also secured summary judgment in McDermitt v. Cook Medical in March 2020 on Indiana statute-of-repose grounds¹⁴ and in Scott v. Cook in November 2023, where the court found the plaintiff lacked the expert evidence to support a negligent design claim for the Tulip filter. Court-approved “screening orders” have led to the dismissal of more than 2,000 cases through motion practice.¹²

The next round targets the Günther Tulip filter, which has not been the subject of a trial in the MDL. Under a June 2025 case management order, the parties compiled a joint list of 376 eligible Tulip cases; plaintiffs, defendants, and the court are each selecting eight, producing 24 cases prepared for trial. No Tulip trial had occurred as of June 2026.¹⁵

The Jurisdictional Hurdle Every Plaintiff Now Faces

In 2023, the Seventh Circuit decided Sykes and Parton v. Cook Incorporated. Both plaintiffs had filters that perforated their vein walls but caused no symptoms. The appeals court vacated the district court’s summary judgment for Cook, but on jurisdictional grounds: the plaintiffs could not show damages above the $75,000 minimum required for federal diversity jurisdiction. The cases were sent back to be dismissed without prejudice.¹⁶

The consequence for everyone else in the MDL: Judge Young now requires plaintiffs to submit Claim Categorization Forms certifying that their damages exceed the $75,000 threshold and detailing the condition of their filter and their injuries.⁴ A perforation with no symptoms and no documented damages is unlikely to survive the gate.

Canadian Claimants Are Covered by a Separate Settlement

The MDL in Indiana does not include Canadian residents. A separate class action, Kuiper v. Cook (Canada) Inc., covered Canadians who received a Cook IVC filter on or before January 8, 2020. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice approved a settlement on May 17, 2024, that pays up to $54,000 CAD per qualifying fracture claimant, up to $81,000 CAD per qualifying death claimant, and up to $169,500 CAD per qualifying open surgery claimant, with proportional reductions if total claims in those categories exceed $4,062,720 CAD.¹⁷¹⁸ The certified claim was narrower than the original filing, focused on Cook’s alleged failure to warn physicians of certain risks. Cook continues to deny the allegations.¹⁹

1
Drugwatch. IVC Filter Lawsuits
2
MDL Update. MDL 2570 Cook Medical IVC Filters
3
AlertCommunications. MDL 2570 Initial Transfer Order
4
Rheingold Law. Cook IVC Filter Lawsuits
5
Drugwatch. Cook IVC Filter Lawsuits
6
Cook Medical. Cook Offers Solutions for Prevention of Pulmonary Embolism
7
ClassAction.org. Cook IVC Master Complaint
8
PhillipsLaw. Cook Medical IVC Filter Lawsuits
9
Annals of Internal Medicine. Information Disclosure, Medical Device Regulation, and Device Safety
10
NIH National Library of Medicine. IVC Filters and Litigation
11
LawFold. Cook IVC Filter Lawsuit Update 2026
12
Faegre Drinker. Cook Medical Litigates National MDL Involving IVC Filter
13
Journal of Vascular Surgery: Venous and Lymphatic Disorders. IVC Filter Litigation Review
14
vLex. In Re Cook Medical
15
AboutLawsuits. Cook Tulip Filter Fractured Perforated Inferior Vena Cava
16
The Indiana Lawyer. 7th Circuit Vacates Summary Judgment for Cook Medical in IVC Filter Cases
17
Canada NewsWire. Settlement Agreement Reached in the Canadian Cook IVC Filter Class Action
18
MiniCounsel. Kuiper v Cook (Canada) Inc., 2024 ONSC 2829
19
Fasken. Defending Cook Companies in Class Action Concerning IVC Filter Products