A California jury has awarded $147 million in damages to medical device reprocessor Innovative Health after finding that Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Biosense Webster illegally restricted hospitals’ access to clinical support when they used reprocessed catheters instead of new ones.
The initial complaint, filed 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleged that Biosense Webster violated federal and California antitrust laws by monopolizing the market for high-density mapping and ultrasound catheters compatible with CARTO 3 cardiac mapping system, according to court documents obtained by Becker’s.
Innovative Health claimed that Biosense Webster, now operating under J&J MedTech, stopped offering clinical support nearly a decade ago for facilities using reprocessed catheters, a policy that pressured hospitals to purchase new devices directly from the company.
Biosense Webster controls more than 50% of the U.S. cardiac mapping system market and its CARTO 3 system is used in hundreds of thousands of electrophysiology studies each year, the complaint said.
