3M Seeks SCOTUS Review of Revival of Bair Hugger Injury Lawsuits

3M Co. urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision that reinstated thousands of lawsuits alleging a surgical warming blanket caused infections, saying the Eighth Circuit applied an erroneously permissive standard in allowing the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit improperly folds reliability into relevance in saying expert testimony should be allowed unless it’s “so fundamentally unsupported” by its factual basis that it can offer no assistance to the jury, 3M said in a petition for certiorari filed on Monday.

Both the extreme leniency and the lack of deference to the district court’s ...