Tennessee Paragard Lawyer: IUD Breakage and Removal Injury Claims

This page is for Tennessee women whose Paragard copper IUD broke when a doctor tried to take it out. Maybe an arm snapped off during removal in the office. Maybe nobody noticed until an ultrasound months later showed a piece still inside. Maybe you ended up in surgery you never planned on.

We’re Fob & Foster Personal Injury Lawyers, a Birmingham firm that reviews Paragard claims from Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga and the rest of Tennessee by phone or video. We’ll tell you straight: Tennessee has one of the shortest injury deadlines in the country, and a Paragard that sat in place for close to ten years runs right into them. Before we talk about anything else, we look at your dates.

What Paragard Is and Why Tennessee Women Are Filing Claims

Paragard is a non-hormonal intrauterine device: a small T-shaped plastic frame wrapped with copper. The copper is what prevents pregnancy. A doctor or nurse practitioner places it in the uterus during an office visit, two thin strings hang through the cervix, and it can stay in place for up to ten years.

The problem the lawsuits focus on is removal. Women and their doctors expect the device to fold and slide out when the strings are pulled. The women suing say theirs didn’t. One or both arms broke off, and the broken piece stayed behind in the uterus, lodged in the uterine wall, or moved somewhere it shouldn’t be.

Teva owned Paragard until November 2017; CooperSurgical and The Cooper Companies have owned it since. Both are defendants, and which one answers for your device can depend on when it was made and sold.

Paragard’s label was updated in 2019, after Cooper took over, to mention breakage during removal. The current FDA-approved label states that breakage of an embedded Paragard during non-surgical removal has been reported. For a failure-to-warn claim, what your doctor was told when your device went in is a central question.

How a Paragard IUD Breaks During Removal

A normal Paragard removal takes a minute or two. The clinician grasps the strings with a forceps and pulls gently; the arms are supposed to flex upward and the whole device should come out in one piece. The women filing suit allege that the plastic arms can weaken while the device sits in the body for years and then snap under the ordinary force of a routine removal. Those are allegations, and Teva and Cooper deny them.

Breakage doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes the doctor looks at the device on the tray, sees an arm missing and tells you on the spot. Other times the removal note simply says the IUD was removed, and nobody checks whether it came out whole. Those women may learn about a retained fragment much later, when pain, bleeding or trouble getting pregnant leads to an ultrasound or X-ray.

That difference, between being told at removal and finding out later, is one of the most important facts in a Tennessee case. It can change when your one-year filing period started. Write down exactly what you were told and when.

Injuries From a Broken Paragard and the Treatment That Follows

The harm in these cases is usually what it takes to find and remove the piece left behind.

A Retained or Embedded Fragment

A broken arm can stay loose in the uterine cavity, push into the muscle of the uterine wall, or perforate through it. It can cause cramping, bleeding and pain with intercourse. Doctors locate it with pelvic ultrasound and X-ray, and sometimes CT.

Hysteroscopy

For a fragment inside the uterus, the usual next step is a hysteroscopy: a thin camera passed through the cervix to see the fragment and pull it out with small instruments. It’s often done under anesthesia at a hospital or surgery center.

Laparoscopy

If the fragment has moved outside the uterus into the pelvis or abdomen, it generally has to be removed through laparoscopic surgery, with small incisions in the abdomen. That’s real surgery, with its own risks of infection, bleeding and scarring.

Hysterectomy and Fertility Loss

In some cases, when a fragment can’t be retrieved or the damage to the uterus is severe, the answer is a hysterectomy. For a woman who planned to have children, that’s the most serious outcome in this litigation. Even without a hysterectomy, scarring from the fragment or from the surgeries to remove it can affect fertility. If you’ve seen a fertility specialist since your removal, those records belong in your file.

Tennessee’s One-Year Deadline and Ten-Year Repose: The Dates That Decide Paragard Claims

Paragard is labeled to stay in place for up to ten years. Tennessee’s products liability statute of repose generally cuts off suits ten years after a product was first purchased. Put those two facts side by side and you can see the problem: many Tennessee women had their device removed near the end of its life, which is often near or past the repose line. That’s why Tennessee Paragard claims look different from Georgia or Alabama claims.

Clock One: The One-Year Statute of Limitations

Tennessee gives you one year to file a personal injury suit, Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(1). That’s half the time Alabama and Georgia allow. Tennessee applies a discovery rule, so the year generally runs from when you knew, or reasonably should have known, that you were injured and that someone’s conduct may have caused it.

For a Paragard break, that often means the day of the removal if the doctor told you the device broke. If you weren’t told and found out from imaging later, the year may have started then. Whether you “should have known” sooner is a fact question the defense will press. In its 2025 timeliness ruling, the MDL court treated the removal date as the point when plaintiffs knew their devices had broken, based on what their complaints said. The clock doesn’t wait for a news story or a verdict.

Clock Two: The Ten-Year Statute of Repose

Product claims in Tennessee fall under the Tennessee Products Liability Act, Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-28-101 et seq. Under § 29-28-103(a), a products suit must generally be brought within six years of the injury, and in any event within ten years from the date the product was first purchased for use or consumption, or within one year after the product’s anticipated life expires, whichever is shorter. The exceptions written into the statute are narrow, such as asbestos and silicone gel breast implant claims.

A statute of repose is different from a statute of limitations. It doesn’t care when you found out. It can bar a claim before the injury even happens. For a device that can stay in for ten years, the ten-year limit is usually the one that bites.

Which Dates Matter in Your Records

• Insertion date. The visit note from the clinic that placed your Paragard. For most women this is the closest record to the “first purchased” date.
• Purchase or billing date for the device. A clinic may have bought the device before your visit, and the defense may argue for that earlier date.
• Removal date. When the break happened.
• The date you learned it broke. Whether that was the removal visit, a later ultrasound or a surgeon’s note.

How the Two Clocks Can Play Out (Illustrations Only)

These simplified examples show how the rules interact. They aren’t real cases.

What Happened to Two Tennessee Claims in 2025

In a February 11, 2025 order on the defendants’ limitations and repose motion, Judge May dismissed dozens of Paragard claims from several states as untimely. Two were Tennessee cases, Dotson and Burnett, dismissed under Tennessee’s statute of repose because the placement date in each complaint was more than ten years before the suit was filed. The court also held that fraudulent concealment does not extend Tennessee’s repose period. In two other Tennessee cases where the placement date was disputed, the court gave the plaintiffs time to submit evidence of that date.

Some Tennessee Paragard claims are time-barred. Some aren’t, and some sit right on the line. The only way to know which group you’re in is to put your insertion and removal records side by side. Please don’t calculate this yourself from a chart on a website. Call us and we’ll look at the actual dates.

Who May Have a Paragard Claim in Tennessee

The women who generally fit the Paragard litigation share a few facts. You may have a claim if:

• You had a Paragard copper IUD (not a hormonal IUD such as Mirena or Kyleena), and
• It broke during removal, or a piece of it was later found in your body, and
• You needed more than a routine office removal: imaging to find the fragment, a hysteroscopy, a laparoscopy, a hysterectomy, or other treatment, or a fragment remains inside you, and
• You live in Tennessee or had the device placed or removed here, and your dates fall inside Tennessee’s one-year limitations period and ten-year repose period, or a fact-specific exception may apply.

Not knowing your lot number, or which clinic placed the device, doesn’t rule you out. The records usually answer those questions.

Some things make a claim harder: a device that came out whole, or a removal more than a year ago where you were told at the time that it broke. We’ll tell you if that’s your situation.

If you searched for a Paragard lawyer near me in Nashville, Clarksville or Murfreesboro, you don’t need to find an office down the street. Paragard cases are generally handled through the federal MDL in Atlanta, and we review Tennessee claims by phone or video from Birmingham.

Records That Prove a Tennessee Paragard Case

A Paragard case is built on records showing when the device went in, when it came out, that it broke, and what treatment followed. In Tennessee the same records also prove the claim is timely.

You don’t need any of this before you call. Once you hire us, we request the records. If you have only one thing, make it a list of dates and clinic names.

Tennessee Product Liability Law for Paragard Claims

If your device was placed and removed in Tennessee, your case in the federal MDL will generally turn on Tennessee law, even though it’s pending in Atlanta. The MDL court applied Tennessee law on that basis in its 2025 timeliness ruling.

The Tennessee Products Liability Act

Claims against Teva and Cooper are product liability claims under the TPLA, Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-28-101 et seq. The theories in the Paragard litigation generally include design defect (the device was made in a way that let the arms break), failure to warn (the companies didn’t adequately tell doctors about breakage risk) and negligence.

The Learned Intermediary Doctrine

Paragard is a prescription product, and Tennessee follows the learned intermediary doctrine (Pittman v. Upjohn Co., Tenn. 1994). The manufacturer’s duty to warn runs to the prescribing doctor, not directly to you. So a failure-to-warn case asks what Teva or Cooper told physicians about breakage, when, and whether a better warning would have changed what your doctor did. The 2019 label change is part of that story.

Modified Comparative Fault

Tennessee uses modified comparative fault (McIntyre v. Balentine, Tenn. 1992). You can recover if you are less than 50% at fault, and your award is reduced by your share. In Paragard cases a manufacturer is more likely to point at someone else, such as the removal technique, and Tennessee allows fault to be divided. That’s one reason we read the removal note closely. We don’t assume your doctor did anything wrong.

Damages and Tennessee’s Caps

Economic damages (medical bills, lost earnings, the cost of future care and fertility treatment) are not capped. Noneconomic damages (pain, suffering, loss of enjoyment of life) are capped at $750,000, or $1,000,000 for catastrophic losses as the statute defines them, Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-39-102. The catastrophic tier covers a short statutory list of injuries, and loss of fertility is not on it, so most Paragard claims fall under the $750,000 cap. Punitive damages are generally capped at the greater of twice compensatory damages or $500,000, Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-39-104, and they require proof well beyond ordinary negligence. For an FDA-approved device like Paragard, § 29-39-104(d) generally bars punitive damages altogether unless the manufacturer withheld or misrepresented material information to the FDA.

Wrongful Death

Deaths are not what this litigation is about. If a family member died from complications of a broken device or the surgery to remove it, Tennessee passes the claim to the surviving spouse, children or next of kin (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 20-5-106, -107, -113), and it is generally subject to the same one-year limit.

Where the Paragard MDL Stands and What It Means for Tennessee Women

Federal Paragard cases from around the country are consolidated in MDL 2974 in the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta, before Judge Leigh Martin May. As of October 1, 2026, the JPML’s pending-dockets report showed 4,224 actions pending and 4,552 in total since the MDL began.

The First Bellwether Was a Defense Verdict

The first bellwether trial, Rickard v. Teva, went to a jury in Atlanta and ended in early February 2026 with a verdict for Teva after about two weeks of trial. We won’t dress that up. A bellwether verdict doesn’t decide anyone else’s case, but it can affect how both sides value claims, and no settlement has been announced.

The Second Trial Moved to April 2027

The second bellwether, Robere v. Teva, was set for September 28, 2026 and has been moved to April 12, 2027. Motions in limine are due October 22, 2026. On August 6, 2026, the court reportedly picked the next group of bellwether cases: White, Gutierrez, Rodriguez and Rounds.

The Preemption Fight

Teva argues that federal law preempts some of the women’s state-law claims, meaning federal regulation of the device would override them. In June 2026, Judge May certified a preemption question for interlocutory appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. Teva petitioned the Eleventh Circuit for permission to appeal on June 11, 2026, and we have not confirmed whether that court has agreed to hear it. Separately, Teva’s lawyers announced on September 3, 2026 that a New Jersey state court had granted Teva summary judgment in a Paragard case, finding the claims preempted. It doesn’t bind the federal MDL, but an Eleventh Circuit decision could shape which claims survive.

Do Tennessee Women Have to Go to Atlanta?

Generally, no. An MDL case usually moves through the shared pretrial process without you traveling. A woman would likely testify in Atlanta only if her case were picked for trial. From Chattanooga, it’s a short drive anyway.

What a Tennessee Paragard Claim May Be Worth

People search for Paragard IUD lawsuit settlement amounts and payouts. There aren’t any yet, and anyone quoting an average Paragard settlement is guessing. Here’s what actually moves the value of a claim:

• The treatment required, from an office retrieval to several surgeries or a hysterectomy.
• Fertility. Whether you lost the ability to carry a child, and your age and plans when it happened.
• A fragment still inside you. Ongoing pain, monitoring or future surgery.
• Medical bills and lost work, past and future. These are uncapped in Tennessee.
• Pain, emotional harm and loss of enjoyment of life, subject to the $750,000 noneconomic cap.
• The timing of your claim. In Tennessee, a claim close to the repose line carries risk the defense will price in.
• Insertion date and label. Whether your device went in before or after the 2019 label change, and whether it was made under Teva or Cooper.
• The state of the MDL. Bellwether results and the preemption appeal will shape any global resolution.

If we don’t think your case is worth pursuing, we’ll say so.

What to Do This Week If Your Paragard Broke

1. Write down your dates. Insertion, removal, the day you learned it broke, and every procedure since. Approximate is fine for now.
2. List every provider. The clinic that placed it, the one that removed it, the imaging center and any hospital or surgeon.
3. Ask in writing that the device and any fragments be preserved, if the removing office or hospital still has them. Don’t throw away anything you were given.
4. Request your insertion and removal notes, or let us do it. They answer most Tennessee timing questions.
5. Keep up with your medical care. If you have pain, bleeding or a fragment still inside you, follow your doctor’s advice.
6. Call us before the one-year mark, not after. If your removal was months ago, the deadline may be close, and the repose date can make it closer.

Paragard Litigation Updates

October 20, 2026 – 4,224 Cases Pending; Robere Pretrial Deadlines Ahead

The JPML’s October 1, 2026 report lists 4,224 pending actions in MDL 2974. Motions in limine in Robere v. Teva are due October 22, 2026, and the trial is scheduled for April 12, 2027. No settlement has been announced.

September 2026 – Teva Wins Preemption Ruling in New Jersey State Court

Teva’s lawyers announced on September 3, 2026 that a New Jersey state court granted Teva summary judgment in a Paragard case, finding the claims preempted. The ruling does not control the federal MDL.

August 26, 2026 – Defendants File Second Limitations and Repose Motion

The defendants reportedly filed a second motion to dismiss cases they say are barred by state limitations and repose rules. Which cases it targets has not been publicly detailed, but Tennessee’s ten-year repose rule makes timing a live issue for Tennessee claims.

August 6, 2026 – Next Bellwether Cases Selected

The court reportedly selected White, Gutierrez, Rodriguez and Rounds as the next bellwether cases.

June 2026 – Preemption Question Certified to the Eleventh Circuit

Judge May certified a preemption question for interlocutory appeal, and Teva petitioned the Eleventh Circuit on June 11, 2026. We have not confirmed whether the Eleventh Circuit has agreed to hear it.

February 2026 – Defense Verdict in the First Bellwether

After about two weeks of trial in Atlanta, the jury in Rickard v. Teva returned a verdict for Teva.

February 11, 2025 – Timeliness Ruling Dismisses Two Tennessee Cases

Judge May dismissed dozens of claims from several states as untimely. Two Tennessee cases were dismissed under Tennessee’s statute of repose, and the court held that fraudulent concealment does not extend that period.

2019 – Label Updated to Mention Breakage on Removal

Paragard’s label was revised to state that breakage of an embedded Paragard during non-surgical removal has been reported.

November 2017 – Cooper Acquires Paragard From Teva

CooperSurgical and The Cooper Companies took over Paragard from Teva.

Talk to a Tennessee Paragard Lawyer Today

Fob & Foster Personal Injury Lawyers is a personal injury firm at 2226 1st Ave S, Suite 105, Birmingham, Alabama. We review Paragard claims from anywhere in Tennessee by phone or video, from Memphis and Jackson to Nashville, Franklin, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Johnson City. We work alongside national co-counsel who are litigating these mass torts.

The free review is simple. You tell us when the device went in, when it came out and what happened after. We tell you how Tennessee’s one-year limitations period and ten-year repose apply to those dates, what records we’d need, and whether we think the claim is worth pursuing. There’s no fee unless we recover for you.

Call (205) 407-6009 or toll-free (866) 837-1010, or send us your question online. In Tennessee, waiting is the one thing that can’t be fixed later.

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