Adam Fleischer, Justin Seigler, and Clay Goldman won summary judgment on behalf of Aspen Insurance UK Ltd. in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania relative to a multi-billion-dollar pelvic mesh claim brought by the bankruptcy trustee for Endo International PLC.

In April of 2011, Endo acquired American Medical Systems, a manufacturer and seller of pelvic mesh implants. Months later, the 2011-2012 insurance policy period incepted, with Aspen insuring $15 million of the insurance tower. Endo eventually faced over 71,000 mesh claims from allegedly injured mesh claimants, and Endo settled the claims for roughly $3.6 billion before declaring bankruptcy in August 2022.  

Endo’s bankruptcy trustee sued its insurers in the 2011-2012 tower to recover portions of the settlement. Specifically, the Trustee alleged that it was able to aggregate, or “batch,” the underlying mesh claims from various years and place them all into the 2011-2012 policy period, treating them as one injury which exceeds a single self-insured retention (SIR).

The Eastern District of Pennsylvania court ruled that:

1) Only mesh claims that are first made during the 2011-2012 period could even potentially trigger coverage in that period, and later claims could not be retroactively “batched” into this period;

2) With respect to any claims first made during the period, a claim is only covered if the implantation at issue took place during a specific 11-month window; and 

3) Any such claim can only be covered if the individual’s damages exceed both the policyholder’s $2.5 million per-claimant unaggregated SIR and a separate SIR below Aspen’s layer in the insurance tower.