- in United States
- with readers working within the Insurance and Retail & Leisure industries
- within Compliance topic(s)
Background
In the late 1990s, transvaginal mesh (TVM) implants became a popular solution for women suffering from stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. In the years following their surgery, some patients experienced a range of symptoms, including pelvic pain, bleeding, vaginal discharge, worsening urinary incontinence, and fecal incontinence. In certain cases, patients required additional surgeries to remove the implants or address internal injuries.
By 2010, lawsuits were filed, which quickly led to more than 100,000 lawsuits targeted at medical device manufacturers. The overwhelming quantity of cases were consolidated into multiple multidistrict litigations (MDLs) — making it one of the largest mass torts in history.
In the following years, several medical device manufacturers reached settlements with plaintiff firms. One resulted in a product liability settlement that was unparalleled at that time in the United States.
Ankura Involvement
Ankura was engaged as claims administrator, providing settlement administration services for those claimants impacted by the TVM implants. In this capacity, Ankura's multidisciplinary team of developers and legal professionals customized ClaimsOnline — a proprietary settlement administration application — to efficiently manage all key settlement components, including reviewing bankruptcy and probate data, processing releases and documents, handling notifications to external users, and processing payments to eligible claimants and lienholders, among others. In addition to this, Ankura:
- Organized, standardized, and analyzed electronic and hard copy data for tens of thousands of TVM claims to provide the client with critical settlement information. In doing so, Ankura identified thousands of duplicate claims, which aided the client in negotiations and prevented costly and unauthorized duplicative payments.
- Designed and implemented a custom workflow, system features, protocol documentation, review and quality control processes, and communication plans to support every individual aspect of each settlement — including creating and applying lien and bankruptcy review processes to ensure sufficient funds were held back from each claimant's settlement to cover government liens, private liens, and requisite bankruptcy trustee distributions.
- Passed routine internal and yearly external audits due to the large number of claimants and high total settlement value.
Value Delivered
Reviewed tens of thousands of claims with a total settlement value of several billion dollars for eligibility.
Configured ClaimsOnline to adhere to specific claim submission, financial, and deadline requirements for dozens of master settlement agreements across numerous plaintiff law firms.
Processed and securely stored tens of millions of pages containing confidential information, including releases and supporting documentation submitted in conjunction with probate proceedings, bankruptcies, liens, and other matters, thereby ensuring all liability for clients is released and records are maintained as contractually obligated.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
