St. Paul, Minn.—More than 5,000 federal lawsuits against the 3M Bair Hugger forced-air warming system have been dismissed by a federal court, a decision that comes some six months after a Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld a state court order dismissing 61 similar cases filed on behalf of Minnesota plaintiffs.
As part of the lawsuits—which were consolidated in a multidistrict litigation in federal court in Minnesota—plaintiffs’ attorneys claimed the warming system was