A King County (Wash.) Superior Court judge ordered a new trial in a wrongful-death case that claimed that a tainted Olympus scope caused the infection that led to a man's death in 2013, according to an article on the Los Angeles Times website.
The judge said Olympus Corp. failed to properly disclose internal emails that raised safety concerns about a redesigned medical scope as early as 2008, several years before the device was publicly tied to deadly superbug outbreaks.
In the first trial, the jury returned a mixed verdict, finding that the device’s design was not unsafe.
The emails — which Olympus shared with the plaintiffs but were not translated from Japanese for the trial as required — suggest that the company was aware of a potential design problem at least four years earlier than has been disclosed.
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