IVC Filter Class Action Lawsuit: Bard, Cook, and Filing Deadlines

The IVC filter class action lawsuit that many people search for does not actually exist in the United States as a class action. Claims against Cook Medical, C.R. Bard, and other manufacturers of inferior vena cava filters are organized as mass torts in multidistrict litigation, meaning each injured person files an individual case and each recovery depends on that person’s own medical records. Bard reached a reported $1.6 billion global settlement in 2024 covering more than 8,000 plaintiffs.¹ The Cook Medical litigation is still open, with settlement discussions underway in 2025 and thousands of cases still pending.²

Class Action or Mass Tort

The shorthand “class action” is used loosely online, but IVC filter cases in the U.S. are not certified classes. They are individual product liability lawsuits consolidated before a single judge for pretrial purposes and then, if not settled, sent back for individual trials. That distinction matters for anyone considering a claim: there is no single settlement pot divided by formula, no automatic inclusion, and no opt-out notice arriving in the mail. You either file a case in your own name or you do not participate.

The only true class action in the file is Canadian. Kuiper v. Cook (Canada) Inc. proceeded in Ontario against Cook’s Celect, Celect Platinum, and Günther Tulip filters. The Ontario Divisional Court dismissed the design negligence claims and narrowed the case to failure to warn.³ The Ontario Superior Court of Justice approved a settlement in May 2024 covering Canadians implanted with a Cook IVC filter on or before January 8, 2020, and the claims deadline was November 11, 2024.⁴

Bard IVC Filter Settlement Status

The C.R. Bard litigation, once consolidated as MDL No. 2641 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, has been largely resolved.⁵ Bard reached a reported global settlement of roughly $1.6 billion in 2024 to resolve the bulk of its cases, involving more than 8,000 plaintiffs.¹ The MDL is now closed.

Individual lawsuits against Bard have not disappeared entirely. The case of Maria Dalbotten, involving a Bard G2 filter that migrated, pierced a vein, and fractured, leaving a fragment lodged in her heart, is moving toward a jury trial in the District of Montana.⁶⁷ Earlier bellwether outcomes shaped the settlement. A March 2018 Arizona jury awarded $3.6 million to Sherr-Una Booker over the G2 filter, and in August 2023 the Seventh Circuit upheld a $3.3 million verdict for Natalie Johnson over a Bard Meridian filter that migrated toward her heart.⁸ The Seventh Circuit rejected Bard’s argument that FDA 510(k) clearance entitled it to a presumption of non-defectiveness, reasoning that clearance denotes only “substantial equivalence” to a predicate device, not safety approval.⁹

Cook Medical Litigation Status

Cases against Cook Medical, targeting mainly the Celect and Günther Tulip filters, remain consolidated in MDL No. 2570 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, before Judge Richard L. Young and Magistrate Judge Tim A. Baker.¹⁰ A total of 11,472 lawsuits have been filed in the MDL, with roughly 6,562 still pending as of mid-2026, and more than 1,000 cases were resolved between January and mid-2025.² Thousands more sit in state courts, primarily in Indiana.¹

Cook has not reached a global settlement. In 2025, Magistrate Judge Baker was appointed as settlement mediator, and the court required plaintiffs to submit forms categorizing their injuries into tiers ranging from “product-in-place” to “wrongful death,” with each plaintiff certifying that individual damages exceed $75,000.¹¹ By October 2025, court filings indicated that parties had agreed on “major terms and conditions of settlement” for a group of active cases, with specifics confidential and negotiations continuing on the remaining thousands.² Based on prior verdicts and comparable mass torts, estimated individual settlement values for serious complications range from about $150,000 to $300,000, though actual outcomes vary widely.¹

Bellwether results have driven those numbers. A May 2018 Texas state court jury awarded $1.24 million to Jeffrey Pavlock, a firefighter whose Cook Celect filter tilted and perforated his vena cava, duodenum, and aorta.¹² In February 2019, a federal jury in Indiana awarded $3 million to Tonya Brand for a Celect filter that perforated her vena cava and fractured in three places, though the court vacated the judgment in January 2020 and ordered a new trial after ruling that an internal Cook email chain had been improperly admitted.¹³

Cases Against Other Manufacturers

IVC filter claims extend past Cook and Bard. In October 2019, a Philadelphia jury awarded $33.7 million to Tracy Reed-Brown against Rex Medical (now Argon Medical) after its Option IVC filter perforated her vena cava and punctured her pancreas, aorta, and renal vein. The filter was deemed impossible to remove and remains in her body.¹⁴

Boston Scientific faces individual suits over its Greenfield filter, 18,000 units of which were recalled in 2005, but no MDL has been established for those cases. Individual filings also continue against ALN, Argon, and Cordis.¹¹

Injuries That Support a Claim

The lawsuits rest on four core device failures, and a viable claim generally requires medical evidence of at least one:

Fracture, where metal struts break and fragments travel through the bloodstream to the heart, lungs, or other organs.²
Perforation, where struts puncture through the vena cava wall into the aorta, intestine, spine, or kidneys. A 2012 study cited in the Cook litigation found an 86 percent perforation rate for Cook filters, reaching 100 percent after more than 71 days in place.²
Migration, where the whole filter or a fragment shifts from its intended spot, sometimes lodging in the heart or lungs.¹⁵
Tilting, where the filter shifts out of alignment, reducing its ability to catch clots and making later retrieval difficult or impossible.²

These failures have been linked to organ damage, chronic pain, emergency surgeries, cardiac tamponade, and death.¹⁶ Retrievable filters, most of which are never actually retrieved, have accounted for nearly 87 percent of complications reported to the FDA.¹⁷

Who Can File

To bring a claim, you generally need to show three things: implantation with a specific IVC filter model (such as the Cook Celect, Cook Günther Tulip, or one of several Bard models including the Recovery, G2, G2 Express, Eclipse, Meridian, or Denali), medical documentation of a complication like fracture, migration, or perforation, and treatment or surgery connected to that complication.¹ Patients whose filters remain in place without documented problems generally do not have viable claims.

Because these are individual lawsuits, you file in your own name through a lawyer who then coordinates with the appropriate MDL or state court program. There is no automatic enrollment based on having received a filter.

Filing Deadlines

There is no single national deadline. Statutes of limitations vary by state, typically running two to six years from the date a plaintiff discovered or should have discovered that the injury was caused by the filter.¹ This discovery rule matters because many patients only learn about a filter complication years after implantation, often through unrelated imaging.

Some states also impose a statute of repose, a hard cutoff tied to the date of implantation regardless of when the injury surfaced. In December 2022, the Seventh Circuit reversed a district court’s dismissal of two Cook IVC filter cases that had been thrown out on statute of limitations grounds, signaling that courts remain open to arguments about when a plaintiff reasonably could have known about the injury.¹¹ Because deadlines vary and hinge on facts specific to when you learned of a complication, timing questions are best confirmed with a lawyer licensed in your state.

1
LawFold. Cook IVC Filter Lawsuit Update
2
MDL Update. Cook Medical IVC Filters MDL 2570
3
Fasken. Defending Cook Companies in Class Action Concerning IVC Filter Products
4
Siskinds LLP. Canadian Cook IVC Settlement Now Open to Claims
5
U.S. District Court, District of Arizona. In Re Bard IVC Filters Products Liability Litigation
6
Miller & Zois. IVC Filter Lawsuit Information
7
Bloomberg Law. Bard Blood Clot Filter Injury Claims Advance Toward Trial
8
VB Attorneys. C.R. Bard IVC Filter Trial Verdict
9
FindLaw. Natalie Johnson v. C. R. Bard, Inc., No. 22-2610
10
U.S. District Court, Southern District of Indiana. MDL Case Information
11
Drugwatch. IVC Filter Lawsuits
12
DMLawFirm. Cook Medical Loses $1.2 Million IVC Filter Verdict
13
FindLaw. In Re Cook Medical, Inc., Brand
14
The Philadelphia Inquirer. Rex Medical IVC Option Vein Filter Jury Award
15
AboutLawsuits.com. Gunther Tulip Filter Lawsuit
16
Wisner Baum. Bard IVC Filter Safety Problems
17
Journal of Vascular Surgery: Venous and Lymphatic Disorders. IVC Filters: Complications and Retrieval Rates