Olympus Scope Lawsuit Washington State — Legal Rights for Washington Patients

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Olympus Scope — Infection Litigation

The Olympus Scope Infection Litigation, Explained

Olympus pleaded guilty in federal court to failing to report scope infections — $85 million in penalties, 250+ patients affected. Here is what is publicly known.

ACTIVE LITIGATION. Most recent filing: June 2026 · deadlines vary by state — some as short as one year.

Marin & Murphy is not licensed in Washington; details below.

Stefanie A. Murphy & Matthew T. Marin

Partners

Super Lawyers® honorees · members of the American Association for Justice · concentrating in personal injury and mass-tort litigation.

Whether any individual has a claim depends on their medical records and the law of their state. The information below covers the litigation itself.

Washington and the Olympus Scope Litigation

Washington patients who developed a serious infection after an endoscopic procedure performed with an Olympus scope may have legal rights against Olympus Corporation, the device manufacturer. The litigation focuses on Olympus’s failure to provide hospitals with adequate reprocessing instructions — not on any negligence by the treating hospital or physician. Washington has a direct and well-documented connection to this litigation.

Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington is the site of one of the most extensively documented Olympus scope outbreaks in peer-reviewed medical literature — 32 patients infected with multidrug-resistant E. coli, including patients who died, all despite confirmed compliance with manufacturer-recommended high-level disinfection protocols. (Ross et al., Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, September 2015, PMID 26092616.) Washington has a 3-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims, which generally runs from the date of injury.

What Is the Olympus Scope Lawsuit?

The Olympus scope lawsuit is a product liability litigation against Olympus Corporation of the Americas — the device manufacturer — for providing hospitals with inadequate cleaning and reprocessing instructions for its endoscopes. Patients who developed serious infections after scope procedures argue that Olympus’s instructions were insufficient to eliminate biological material that could be transmitted from prior patients.

On December 10, 2018, Olympus Medical Systems Corporation pleaded guilty to three counts of distributing misbranded medical devices and paid $85 million in fines for failing to file FDA-required adverse-event reports about serious infections. (DOJ press release, December 10, 2018; Case No. 2:18-cr-00727-SRC, D.N.J.) Olympus pleaded guilty to distributing misbranded duodenoscopes by failing to file FDA-required adverse-event reports.

See our Olympus criminal history page for details. The October 2025 Urgent Field Safety Notice updated Olympus’s reprocessing instructions for current-generation TJF duodenoscopes and introduced a Visual Inspection Guide recommending 10X magnification. Olympus reported 2 deaths and 5 serious injuries from infection potentially related to these devices since 2024, while stating it could not determine from the available reports whether the devices caused the infections.

In December 2024, the MAJ-891 Class I Recall covered 30,140 units of the MAJ-891 Forceps/Irrigation Plug distributed in U.S. commerce — associated with 120 reported injuries and 1 reported death following procedures in which the MAJ-891 accessory was used with a cystoscope (not a duodenoscope). (FDA Recall Z-0905-2025.) As of June 2026, no MDL has been filed or is currently pending; cases are proceeding as individual lawsuits in federal and state courts.

Why Washington Patients Are at Risk

Olympus holds approximately 70–80% of the U.S. endoscope market. The vast majority of Washington hospitals performing ERCP, colonoscopy, and bronchoscopy procedures use Olympus devices. Washington patients who had scope procedures at any major hospital in the state likely had their procedure performed with Olympus equipment. Virginia Mason Medical Center (Seattle, WA) is directly named in the peer-reviewed scientific literature in connection with this litigation.

Between November 2012 and August 2013, 32 patients developed infections with multidrug-resistant E. coli linked to Olympus duodenoscopes at that facility. Seven patients died within 31 days of the organism being identified in culture; 16 patients had died by March 2015. MDR E. coli was recovered from 4 of 8 Olympus duodenoscopes tested. (Ross et al., Gastrointest Endosc. 2015;82(3):477–83. PMID 26092616.) See our Virginia Mason Medical Center page for more detail. Additional major Washington facilities where scope procedures are routinely performed include the state’s academic medical centers and large health systems across the Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia areas.

Given Olympus’s 70–80% share of the U.S. flexible endoscope market, patients treated at these facilities were statistically likely to have undergone procedures using Olympus devices. No specific outbreak is being asserted as to any individual Washington facility. No specific outbreak data for these institutions beyond Virginia Mason is being asserted here — Olympus’s dominant U.S. market share makes these facilities statistically likely users of Olympus devices.

The FDA’s MAUDE adverse event database may contain relevant reports from Washington facilities.

Criteria for This Litigation

The following criteria define eligibility for this litigation:

• ☐  Procedure date on or after January 1, 2015.
• ☐  Procedure performed with an Olympus bronchoscope, upper GI endoscope, or colonoscope.
• ☐  Confirmed infection diagnosis required.
• ☐  Inpatient hospitalization for the infection required. Outpatient treatment with oral antibiotics alone does not qualify.
• ☐  IV antibiotic treatment during hospitalization required.
• ☐  Infection and hospitalization within 30 days of scope procedure. Most patients in this litigation developed symptoms within approximately five days.
• ☐  No active dialysis or chemotherapy.

Device disintegration: If the scope or any component broke apart during your procedure and required emergency surgery to remove fragments, this may represent a separate product liability claim.

Frequently Asked Questions: Olympus Scope Lawsuit Washington

Can Washington patients file an Olympus scope lawsuit?

Yes — Washington patients who developed a qualifying infection after a scope procedure performed with an Olympus device may have legal rights in this product liability litigation. The hospital is not the defendant in this litigation. Olympus — the device manufacturer — is the subject of the claims. Washington patients have the same legal options as patients in any other state.

What is the filing deadline for Washington Olympus scope claims?

Washington has a 3-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims. The clock generally runs from the date of injury — the date you developed the infection. For scope-linked infections, most patients in this litigation developed symptoms within approximately five days of the procedure. Even if you believe your filing deadline may have passed, you should not assume 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.

Which Washington hospitals use Olympus scopes?

Olympus holds approximately 70–80% of the U.S. endoscope market. The majority of Washington hospitals performing ERCP, colonoscopy, and bronchoscopy procedures use Olympus devices. Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle is directly named in peer-reviewed literature — more than 30 patients infected. (Ross et al., PMID 26092616.) Major Washington academic medical centers and health systems also perform high volumes of endoscopic procedures.

I had an ERCP at a Washington hospital and developed an infection — what should I do?

Preserve your procedure records and infection diagnosis records. Patients who developed an infection may wish to consult an attorney about their options. The two most important pieces of documentation are: (1) the procedure record identifying the specific Olympus scope model and date of the procedure; and (2) infection diagnosis records confirming the type of organism and date of diagnosis.

What is the Olympus scope lawsuit?

The Olympus scope lawsuit is a product liability litigation against Olympus Corporation for providing hospitals with inadequate reprocessing instructions for its endoscopes. Olympus pleaded guilty in 2018 to distributing misbranded duodenoscopes by failing to file FDA-required adverse-event reports and paid $85 million in penalties. (DOJ press release, December 10, 2018.) In October 2025, Olympus updated its reprocessing instructions for current-generation TJF duodenoscopes and issued a Visual Inspection Guide recommending 10X magnification, following reports of two deaths and five serious injuries from infection potentially related to those devices that Olympus stated it could not conclusively attribute to the duodenoscopes.

Who qualifies to file in Washington?

Qualifying criteria: procedure date 2015 or later; procedure performed with an Olympus bronchoscope, upper GI endoscope, or colonoscope; confirmed infection diagnosis; inpatient hospitalization requiring IV antibiotic treatment; infection occurring within 30 days of the scope procedure.

How much is a Washington Olympus scope claim worth?

Case value varies based on the severity of the infection, the patient’s age and medical condition, the degree of life disruption, and whether the infection caused permanent harm or death. In one publicized case arising from the Virginia Mason outbreak (Bigler v. Olympus, King County Superior Court, Seattle, WA, July 24, 2017), a jury found Olympus liable for failure to warn and awarded $6.6 million to Virginia Mason Medical Center, which had joined the suit; the hospital was ordered to pay the patient’s family $1 million, and the jury rejected the claim that the duodenoscope was defectively designed. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

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.