Wednesday, January 27, 1999
Last payment in pacemaker wires suit
175 in Tristate get slice of $60M
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
An estimated 800 pacemaker recipients and their lawyers have shared the $60 million settlement from a manufacturer of coiled wires that connected patients' hearts and their pacemakers.
With the final payment, U.S. District Judge Sandra S. Beckwith has closed out the class action against Siemens Pacesetter Inc. of suburban Los Angeles.
Attorneys Louis F. Gilligan and Gregory M. Utter said checks ranged from $62,500 for people who received the implants before they were 21 to $18,000 for patients who received them after age 80.
An estimated 175 recipients live in the Tristate.
Not every potential claim was filed despite lawyers' efforts to notify every recipient. Initially, Mr. Gilligan estimated 2,000 people were eligible.
Some people who were contacted said they didn't want to get involved even though they were eligible for up to $25,000, he said.
About 100 filed claims that were not valid for various reasons, he added.
Others who probably would have been eligible for checks died of old age, he said. The median age of recipients was at least 70.
Mr. Gilligan said Siemens made Models 1016T and 1026T leads with defective insulation and marketed them without federal approval.
The battery-powered pacemakers were not involved.
Siemens Pacesetter denied any wrongdoing but paid about $52 million. The remainder came from St. Jude Medical Inc. of Minneapolis, which bought Siemens Pacesetter after the 1993 class action began.
The settlement covered leads that failed before June 1, 1995. Recipients whose Siemens Pacesetter leads failed later had to pursue their own suits.
Unlike some other firms' defective heart pacemaker leads, Mr. Gilligan said, failed Siemens Pacesetter wires did not kill.
Rather, patients' symptoms returned, and another lead could be implanted without removing the problem wire.
Siemens Pacesetter recalled both leads voluntarily before the suit was filed in 1993.
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