Bard PowerPort: $40 Million Plaintiff Verdict in the First Fracture Bellwether

What the jury decided

The jury returned its verdict on September 4, 2026, after a trial that began August 18. It found that the Bard implanted port catheter at issue was defective in its design and that the company failed to give physicians an adequate warning, and it awarded Kimberly Divelbliss, a New Mexico woman, $40 million in compensatory damages. The jury did not find a manufacturing defect or fraudulent concealment. At the July 17 pretrial conference, Bard had moved to bifurcate the punitive question from liability and compensatory damages; in the end the jury awarded no punitive damages. The device at issue was a silicone Groshong catheter placed in the subclavian vein.

Why this is the first real test of the fracture theory

Divelbliss matters because of what it is: the first catheter-fracture case in the MDL to reach a jury. The first bellwether, Cook, was an infection case that ended in April and May 2026 with a defense verdict on the decided claims and a hung jury on the central design-defect question. That left the design-defect theory unresolved. Divelbliss put it back in front of a jury on a fracture record, and this time the jury found for the plaintiff on design defect. The bellwether program was built to test exactly this kind of difference between injury theories, and the first two results suggest the fracture claims and the infection claims may not play the same way in front of a jury.

Why a bellwether verdict is not a payout

MDL-3081 consolidates federal Bard PowerPort cases before Judge David G. Campbell in the District of Arizona, where about 3,734 actions were pending as of the September 1, 2026 JPML report. A bellwether trial tests one representative case so both sides can gauge how juries respond. It does not resolve anyone else's claim, and it does not set a dollar value for the rest of the docket. Three things follow. The $40 million figure is not a per-case value, and we do not publish projected settlement figures. The verdict itself is not final while post-trial motions and any appeal run their course, a process that commonly takes a year or more and can reduce, overturn, or retry an award. And there is no settlement in this litigation; three more bellwethers are reported for October 13 and December 1, 2026, and February 2, 2027, though those dates are not yet tied to named cases in a primary case management order.

Where the litigation goes next

What a plaintiff verdict changes most immediately is negotiating posture. Bard has now watched a jury award eight figures on a fracture and design-defect record, which it will weigh against a first bellwether it won. Whether that produces settlement discussions, and on what terms, is not something anyone can responsibly predict right now. Under the MDL's case management orders, cases not resolved after the bellwethers are to be transferred or remanded to their home districts for trial. Fracture claims are only about 12% of the inventory, so the infection and blood-clot claims that make up most of the docket still have to be tested on their own facts.

This is general litigation reporting and not legal advice. Filing deadlines vary by state and by when an injury was discovered, and they can bar a claim regardless of its merits. Anyone weighing a claim should confirm which device was implanted, gather their medical records, and speak with a licensed attorney about their own situation.