A Seattle judge said Olympus Corp. failed to properly disclose internal emails that raised safety concerns about a redesigned medical scope as early as 2008, several years before the device was publicly tied to deadly superbug outbreaks.
Citing those “willful discovery violations” by the Japanese device giant, King County Superior Court Judge Steve Rosen ordered a new trial (PDF) Tuesday in a wrongful death case brought by Theresa Bigler. The Seattle-area widow, whose case was the first to go to trial in the nationwide outbreaks, claimed that a tainted Olympus scope caused the infection that led to her husband’s death in 2013. The jury returned a mixed verdict, finding that the device’s design was not unsafe.
