California Superior Court judge Eddie Sturgeon ruled on January 30, 2020, that Johnson & Johnson had “deceptively marketed their pelvic mesh products” for years to doctors and consumers, without fully disclosing the risk of the devices. The court concluded that Johnson & Johnson owed $344 million in damages, which was supported by the testimony of Hemming Morse Partner Travis Armstrong:
“The Court finds that for each of these categories, Mr. Armstrong relied on J&J’s available data and evidence to draw reasonable inferences and extrapolations, make assumptions, and produce reasonable estimates or calculations of the circulation or dissemination of J&J’s deceptive marketing messages. In doing so, for some of the categories, Mr. Armstrong conservatively omitted from his count certain gaps of time where the evidence shows that J&J was engaged in deceptive marketing conduct, but the incompleteness of J&J’s data did not permit a calculation or estimate. The Court credits Mr. Armstrong’s methodology, extrapolations, estimates and calculations and finds that they have produced reasonable quantifications of the number of times J&J circulated its marketing materials.”
