Thousands of women who won a landmark class action over damage done by pelvic mesh more than a year ago - have still not received compensation. The action was brought against medical device giant Johnson and Johnson - ending in a $300-million settlement.
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00:00Pelvic mesh was used for women who had problems after childbirth with pelvic organ prolapse
00:07or stress incontinence, which affects about 20% of women after childbirth.
00:13Previously they'd used natural native tissue to fix those problems, then in the 90s they
00:19invented this particular product, mesh, which they used, a plastic mesh.
00:23Now what's happened is that particular mesh was found to be embedded in tissues, protruding
00:28into organs, causing chronic pain, a lot of women have had to have it removed, they've
00:34suffered enormously, and so as a result of that, not just in Australia, but around the
00:38world, there have been class actions, and in particular against Johnson & Johnson, which
00:43manufactured one of the biggest ones, or a number of those devices, some of which have
00:48actually been removed from the market, but still are being implanted.
00:53Okay, so can you tell us a little bit about the court case and then the settlement?
00:57So in 2012, Shine, which is a no-win, no-fee law firm, decided to launch a class action,
01:03they appealed for women to join the class action, and they took a case to the Federal
01:09Court, which they won in 2019.
01:12That was with three lead plaintiffs who won between $500,000 and over a million dollars,
01:18but then Shine decided to settle for the rest of the women, instead of taking those cases
01:22to court, they settled for $300 million.
01:26A lot of the women were very unhappy about that, especially because of costs coming out
01:30of it, but also the Federal Court Justice, Justice Michael Lee, was concerned about how
01:35that settlement had come about as well.
01:38Okay, so the women haven't yet received their payments, is that right?
01:42That's right, so it's been over a year since that settlement was decided upon, there's
01:47an administrator of the fund, they are still working out what has to be paid back to Medicare,
01:52the NDIS, the Commonwealth Private Health Funds, which is required under compensation
01:57law, but they also have been, a lot of fees have come out.
02:01So Shine has taken about $36 million in fees, the administrators are able to take up to
02:07$17 million, and so in total they're losing about $80 million, already from the $300 million.
02:14Having said that, there is interest accruing, so the amount is increasing again, however
02:20in the meantime, the women have received nothing.
02:23And that is one of the greatest concerns here, is the money coming out for the fees, isn't it?
02:27It is, because these women say we are going to be left with nothing, the lawyers are going
02:31to do so well out of it, and in fact what we did is we invited women into the ABC to
02:36tell us about what their real concerns are.
02:39We have multiple women that are absolutely palliative and bedridden, they deserve so
02:44much more than a pathetic minor amount of money.
02:48The cost of actually distributing the funds is chipping away at the actual amount when
02:55it should be going to the members, that's the thing that's so infuriating.
02:59And they seem to be able to get away with it.
03:02I don't even know whether I am going to have enough money to get the medical care that
03:07I need, probably for the next 20 years.
03:09I don't know how they can look at themselves in the mirror and know the suffering of the
03:14women and feel justified in taking that amount of money from the settlement.
03:19Shine lawyers won, and Johnson and Johnson won, and the three lead applicants as well.
03:2710,000, 15,000 other women that are group members.
03:34We're the losers.
03:36It's not fair.
03:39The legal firm Shine ran the class action and when the settlement was decided upon they
03:44wanted to take around $32 million out of that settlement for interest costs.
03:50They had taken it out alone to fund the class action and then they were trying to take that
03:55money from there.
03:56The women were very angry about that and protested, and in fact Justice Michael Lee refused that.
04:02But he talked about the conflicts of interest that Shine needed to recognise, that they
04:06had been paying out a lot of money, millions of dollars in dividends to shareholders while
04:13at the same time borrowing this amount of money and now wanting to take it from the
04:17settlement fund.
04:19They were unable to do that so they didn't get that money, but in the end the women feel
04:24betrayed by Shine.
04:25They feel that they were misled because there was no agreement with them.
04:29It was with the three lead plaintiffs, and the problem for those women now is they don't
04:33know how much they'll get or if they will get anything, and that is a question that
04:37they are still waiting to get answers from, not from Shine but from the administrators
04:42of the fund now.
04:43And just before I let you go, where to now?
04:45How long won't this take for them to get answers?
04:47So we spoke to the administrators who said that they are working hard to try to assess
04:52all of the women.
04:53They have to decide who's eligible and who isn't.
04:56They have to take out these funds that go back to the Commonwealth and private health
04:59funds.
05:00They haven't told us when those women will receive anything.
05:03We've been told that there'll be a first payment of $4,000 and for some women that's all they'll
05:10receive if they have minor complications.
05:13It's unknown how much more anybody else will receive, but it's not going to be in the order
05:18of $500,000 or $1.2 million, which is what the three lead plaintiffs got.