Olympus Scope Lawsuit — What You Need to Know About the Endoscope Infection Litigation

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Olympus Scope — Infection Claims

Hospitalized With an Infection After a Scope Procedure?

If you were told it was “just a complication,” Olympus’s federal guilty plea — and $85 million in penalties — tell a different story. In two minutes, you can know whether your case qualifies.

ACTIVE LITIGATION. 250+ patients · most recent filing: June 2026 · deadlines vary by state — some as short as one year.

Were you hospitalized with an infection within 30 days of an endoscopy or scope procedure?

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Free · confidential · no fee unless there is a recovery · answering doesn’t commit you to anything. Court costs and litigation expenses are advanced by counsel and repaid from the recovery. You are not responsible for court costs or litigation expenses if there is no recovery, unless a court directs otherwise. The attorney’s fee is a percentage of the gross recovery, calculated before expenses are deducted.

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Stefanie A. Murphy & Matthew T. Marin

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You’ll get a straight answer even if it’s “you don’t qualify.” Everything you share is confidential — even if you never hire us. No fee unless there is a recovery; costs are advanced and reimbursed only out of a recovery. If you do qualify, our Olympus scope litigation team requests the medical and hospital records — you don’t chase them.

Qualification depends on what the medical records show — the scope involved, the infection, and the timing. We’ll review them and give you a straight answer either way.

Olympus Corporation — responsible for more than 70 percent of endoscopes used in U.S. hospitals — pleaded guilty to distributing misbranded duodenoscopes by failing to file FDA-required adverse-event reports in 2018, paid $85 million in penalties. Patients at hospitals across the country developed life-threatening infections from contaminated Olympus scopes. If you had a scope procedure and developed a confirmed infection requiring hospitalization, you may have legal rights — but filing deadlines vary by state and some are as short as one year. Contact an attorney before taking any other step.

As of August 31, 2026: 4 federal cases indexed, 1 filed in the last 30 days. See the member-case ledger on the litigation updates page.

What Is the Olympus Scope Lawsuit?

The Olympus scope lawsuit refers to civil litigation filed against Olympus Corporation and its U.S. subsidiary, Olympus Corporation of the Americas, arising from contaminated duodenoscopes that caused preventable infections in patients across multiple U.S. hospitals. Plaintiffs allege that Olympus designed and marketed endoscopes — particularly duodenoscopes — with a defective fixed elevator mechanism that makes adequate cleaning impossible using standard high-level disinfection protocols.

In December 2018, Olympus Medical Systems Corporation and former senior executive Hisao Yabe pleaded guilty in federal court to three counts of distributing misbranded medical devices. Olympus paid $85 million in penalties linked to its scopes. (Source: DOJ press release, December 10, 2018; Case No. 2:18-cr-00727-SRC, U.S. District Court, D.N.J.) That criminal record is significant because it shows Olympus failed to file the adverse-event reports that federal law required for infections involving its scopes.

How that 2018 criminal judgment affects available defenses or related civil claims is a question the courts will decide on the facts of each case. In October 2025, Olympus issued an Urgent Field Safety Notice admitting that prior reprocessing protocols for its current-generation TJF-series duodenoscopes were insufficient. Olympus announced that 10x magnification tools — tools hospitals had never previously been told were necessary — were now required for proper scope inspection.

The notice disclosed two confirmed patient deaths and five serious injuries linked to these current-generation scopes. (Source: Olympus Urgent Field Safety Notice, October 14—17, 2025.) As of June 2026, no MDL has been filed or is currently pending; cases are proceeding as individual lawsuits in federal and state courts. Attorneys representing affected patients across multiple states are preparing cases now.

Which Hospitals Have Been Linked to Olympus Scope Infections?

Peer-reviewed research and government investigations have named multiple U.S. hospitals in confirmed outbreak events linked to contaminated Olympus duodenoscopes.

Virginia Mason Medical Center — Seattle, Washington. The outbreak at Virginia Mason ran from November 2012 through August 2013 and involved 1,149 ERCP procedures. Thirty-two patients were infected with multidrug-resistant E. coli. Seven died within 31 days of the organism being identified in culture; 16 had died overall by March 2015. The bacteria were recovered from 4 of 8 Olympus duodenoscopes tested, even though no breach in high-level disinfection protocol or infection control practices was identified.

(Source: Ross et al., Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, September 2015, PMID 26092616.) In Bigler v. Olympus (King County Superior Court, July 24, 2017) — the only case in this litigation tried to verdict — the jury found Olympus liable for failure to warn, rejected the design-defect claim, and awarded $6.6 million to Virginia Mason Medical Center for the hospital’s own losses and $1 million to the patient’s family.

That verdict was obtained by the plaintiffs’ trial counsel in that case — not by Marin & Murphy Law Firm, which had no role in the Bigler litigation. In January 2018 the court granted the patient’s family a new trial after finding that Olympus had withheld internal safety records, and the family’s claims were later resolved by confidential settlement. It is cited here as public-record context only; results vary, and no outcome in another case predicts or guarantees a similar result in any other matter.

Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center — Los Angeles, California. Seventeen patients were affected: 9 confirmed active infections, 7 asymptomatic carriers, and 1 index patient. Two patients died. Approximately 179 patients were potentially exposed. The pathogen was blaOXA-232 carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae. A field investigation found no deviations from FDA or manufacturer recommendations in how the scopes were cleaned. (Source: Humphries et al., Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2017, PMID 29579235.)

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center — Los Angeles, California. Four confirmed CRE cases were identified, with approximately 71 patients notified. (Source: LA County Department of Public Health, Board of Supervisors memo, March 10, 2015.)

A teaching hospital in Illinois. In 2013, this hospital was the site of a documented outbreak of NDM-producing CRE traced to a medical device. Thirty-nine case patients were identified. Patients who underwent ERCP at that hospital were 78 times more likely to develop NDM-CRE infection (odds ratio 78; 95% CI, 6.0–1008). (Source: Epstein et al., JAMA, October 8, 2014, PMID 25291580.)

UPMC Presbyterian Hospital — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. UPMC Presbyterian was among the first U.S. hospitals to notify Olympus of a potential duodenoscope-associated infection event, in November 2012 — three years before the FDA issued any public warning. The hospital is named in the Senate HELP Committee report. (Source: Senate HELP Committee, “Preventable Tragedies,” January 13, 2016.)

Hartford Hospital — Hartford, Connecticut. Hartford Hospital is listed in the Senate HELP Committee report’s outbreak table (12 patients, January 2014, Olympus). (Source: Senate HELP Committee, January 13, 2016.) The Senate HELP Committee estimated that at least 250 patients worldwide contracted potentially deadly infections from contaminated duodenoscopes — and stated that figure is likely a significant undercount.

The actual number of affected patients was substantially higher than official reports reflected.

Why Are Olympus Scopes Dangerous?

Three independent research groups, working across different time periods and using different methodologies, have reached the same conclusion: standard cleaning protocols fail to reliably decontaminate Olympus endoscopes, and manufacturer-recommended improvements have not solved the problem. Standard high-level disinfection (HLD) — the FDA-approved cleaning protocol hospitals use between patients — leaves approximately a significant share of patient-ready duodenoscopes contaminated with gastrointestinal bacteria even when hospital staff follow manufacturer instructions exactly.

(Source: Larsen S, et al., EClinicalMedicine. 2020;25:100451. PMID: 32954234.) A 2022 meta-analysis of 9,084 post-reprocessing cultures found 5% contamination even after enhanced cleaning protocols beyond standard HLD, including 0.8% high-risk organisms. (Source: Bomman et al., Clinical Endoscopy, January 2022, PMC8831410.) An 8-year retrospective study at a Dutch tertiary-care hospital found that by 2022, any-organism contamination (AM20 — any microorganism at ≥20 CFU per 20 mL) reached a high share in patient-ready duodenoscopes; clinically meaningful patient-origin (MGO) contamination ranged from 14.3% to 47.5% annually over the study period.

Critically, all manufacturer-recommended interventions — disposable endcap designs, new automated reprocessing machines, and staff audits — failed to produce a meaningful reduction in contamination rates over the entire study period. (Source: van der Ploeg et al., Gut, March 2024, PMID 38182137, DOI: 10.1136/gutjnl-2023-330355.) The design problem centers on a component called the elevator mechanism — a small hinged channel at the tip of duodenoscopes that guides surgical instruments.

Unlike the straight interior channels of other medical scopes, the elevator mechanism creates recessed spaces and irregular surfaces that standard brushes cannot reach. Organic tissue and bacteria accumulate in these recesses like sediment in a kinked garden hose. Even when the exterior of the scope appears clean, the elevator channel can harbor bacteria that survive chemical disinfection and re-contaminate the next patient.

Olympus’s October 2025 Urgent Field Safety Notice was an admission that even its then-current cleaning instructions were inadequate. Every patient who underwent a procedure with a TJF-series duodenoscope before October 2025 was subject to a cleaning protocol that Olympus has since admitted was inadequate.

What Did Olympus Know and When?

• November 2012 UPMC Presbyterian Hospital, Pittsburgh, notified Olympus of a potential duodenoscope-associated infection event. This was the earliest known U.S. notification to Olympus. It was not disclosed to the FDA or the public.
• February 19, 2015 The FDA issued a Safety Communication disclosing that manufacturer cleaning instructions may be insufficient for all ERCP duodenoscopes. (Source: FDA Safety Communication, February 19, 2015.)
• March 2018 FDA Warning Letter MARCS-CMS 546986 documented that more than two years after the FDA issued a mandatory postmarket surveillance order, Olympus had established zero surveillance sites — taking no meaningful steps to study the ongoing contamination problem it had been ordered to investigate. (Source: FDA Warning Letter MARCS-CMS 546986, March 2018.)
• December 10, 2018 Olympus Medical Systems Corporation and former senior executive Hisao Yabe pleaded guilty to three federal criminal counts of distributing misbranded medical devices, paying $85 million in penalties and for failing to file FDA-required adverse-event reports of infections. (Source: DOJ press release; Case No. 2:18-cr-00727-SRC, D.N.J.)
• March 2023 FDA Warning Letter MARCS-CMS 654013 found that Olympus had failed to investigate cracked MAJ-2315 distal end covers for two years. (Source: FDA Warning Letter MARCS-CMS 654013, March 2023.)
• December 18, 2024 FDA Class I Recall of the MAJ-891 Forceps/Irrigation Plug — 30,140 units in U.S. commerce. The recall covered a plug accessory that could retain biological material during reprocessing, creating an ongoing infection risk. Olympus reported 120 injuries and one reported death from infection following procedures in which this accessory was used with a cystoscope (not a duodenoscope). (Source: FDA Recall Z-0905-2025.)
• June 24, 2025 FDA Import Alert 89-04 blocked 58 models of Olympus devices from entering the United States, citing ongoing manufacturing quality system violations at Olympus’s Aizu, Japan facility. (Source: FDA Import Alert 89-04, June 24, 2025.)
• October 14—17, 2025 Olympus Urgent Field Safety Notice — worldwide. Olympus admitted prior protocols were insufficient, disclosed two deaths and five serious injuries linked to TJF-series scopes, and required 10x magnification tools for the first time. (Source: Olympus Urgent Field Safety Notice, October 14—17, 2025.)
• March 2026 Health Canada recalled MAJ-1443 and MAJ-1444 valve accessories — the most recent global regulatory action as of April 2026. (Source: Health Canada Recall, March 2026.)

Who Qualifies to File an Olympus Scope Lawsuit?

Every Olympus scope case is an individual lawsuit filed by an Olympus scope lawyer for one patient; there is no class action or MDL to sign up for. What an Olympus scope attorney does, how to choose one, how to file a claim, and how any payout per person would be set are covered on the Olympus scope lawyer page and its companions.

Qualifying criteria have been confirmed. A patient may qualify if all of the following apply:

Expired statute of limitations: Even if you believe your filing deadline may have passed, contact us before assuming you have no options. Depending on the circumstances of your case and how a potential global resolution is structured, there may still be options worth exploring with an attorney.

How Much Is an Olympus Scope Lawsuit Worth?

Every case is different, and no attorney can guarantee a specific outcome. But based on published jury verdicts, settlement history in similar medical device cases, and Olympus’s 2018 criminal guilty plea, here is what qualifying cases generally look like. For a complete breakdown of case value factors, see the settlement value guide. The only case tried to verdict, Bigler v. Olympus (July 24, 2017), awarded $6.6 million to Virginia Mason Medical Center for the hospital’s own losses and $1 million to the patient’s family.

The $6.6 million is a hospital’s commercial recovery, not a patient award. (Source: King County Superior Court, Seattle, WA.) This is the primary public data point for valuing serious Olympus scope claims. Olympus’s 2018 criminal guilty plea means the company cannot credibly claim it did not know its instructions were inadequate, and it cannot use bankruptcy to avoid liability.

What Should I Do If I Had a Scope Procedure?

If you had a bronchoscopy, upper GI endoscopy, or colonoscopy performed with an Olympus scope and developed an infection requiring hospitalization, complete these steps:

Frequently Asked Questions

Matthew T. Marin, J.D. — Admitted in Rhode Island, South Carolina, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Stefanie A. Murphy, J.D. — Admitted in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

Attorney Advertising. Marin & Murphy Law Firm. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.