Olympus Corp. Loses Trial But Gets Key Win

The Japanese manufacturer was ordered to pay more than $6 million damages in connection with a superbug outbreak at a Seattle hospital, but the jury rejected claims that the manufacturer’s medical scope was unsafe as designed. The trial was the first in the U.S. to test claims that gastrointestinal scopes are causing outbreaks of drug-resistant infections.

An attorney for the firm expressed appreciation that the jury recognized that Olympus’s design did not contribute to the death of a patient in 2013, but the same jury decided that Olympus failed to provide adequate warnings about the scope or instructions for its use after it was manufactured, and that failure harmed Virginia Mason Medical Center.