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Spinal Cord Stimulator — Device Litigation
The Spinal Cord Stimulator Litigation, Explained
Federal cases are consolidated in MDL 3181, most cases are in their earliest stages, and no settlement exists. Here is what is publicly known.
ACTIVE LITIGATION — NO SETTLEMENT. MDL 3181 underway · deadlines vary by state.
Marin & Murphy is not licensed in California; details below.
Partners
Stefanie A. Murphy & Matthew T. Marin
Super Lawyers® honorees · members of the American Association for Justice · concentrating in personal injury and mass-tort litigation.
No settlement has been reached in the spinal cord stimulator litigation, and most cases are in their earliest stages. Every case must be proven on its own facts. Whether any individual has a claim depends on their medical records and the law of their state. The information below covers the litigation itself.
Los Angeles is not just another city in this litigation — it is the litigation. MDL 3181, the federal consolidation of Boston Scientific spinal cord stimulator lawsuits, sits in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in downtown Los Angeles, before Judge Josephine L. Staton (Dkt. 2:26-ml-03181). More than 40 individual Boston Scientific stimulator cases have been filed in this district since mid-2025 — a filing pace of several per month. And the defendant’s neuromodulation division is headquartered in LA County: Boston Scientific Neuromodulation operates from Valencia, the same unit named in the August 2026 Class I recall of Infinion CX leads.
Where Los Angeles-area patients were implanted
Medicare’s CY2024 data shows greater LA’s stimulator work concentrated at the academic centers: Ronald Reagan UCLA (26 trial-level and 49 implant-level neurostimulator procedure services), Cedars-Sinai (23/43), Keck Hospital of USC (19/27), UCLA Santa Monica (11/33), and Huntington Hospital, Pasadena (28 trial-level). (Medicare FFS floors.) If your device was implanted or revised at any of these facilities, say so on the call; no records are needed for the review.
The court that matters for your case
A Los Angeles-area case would proceed in the Central District of California — the MDL’s home courthouse; qualifying Boston Scientific cases can be filed directly into MDL 3181 here. Federal Boston Scientific cases consolidate in MDL 3181; the JPML centralized the Abbott cases as MDL 3194 and the Nevro cases as MDL 3195 on October 2, 2026.
It sounds like you’ve been told this is normal
Maybe the trial worked and the permanent one never did. Maybe you’ve been through a dozen reprogrammings. Maybe you finally just turned it off and left it where it is.
You’re probably thinking this was your own fault for agreeing to it. You may be worried that asking questions could cost you your pain doctor. And you may not be someone who sues anybody, ever.
None of that has to change for you to find out what happened. The FDA has logged more than 372,000 adverse event reports on spinal cord stimulators, including more than 1,800 deaths. In California, Medicare alone paid for 2,099 people to have a stimulator generator implanted in 2024 — and 819 people to have their leads surgically removed or revised in the same year. You didn’t miss something that everyone else caught. Most people were introduced to this device the same way you were.
The question isn’t whether you’re the kind of person who files a lawsuit. It’s what happened to you, and whether anyone has ever told you the truth about it.
→ What the Medicare record shows about spinal cord stimulators in California
If it just stopped working, is that enough?
This is the question that stops most people, and the honest answer has changed.
For years the standard answer was no — that a device which simply stopped relieving pain, with no revision surgery and no hardware failure, was not the basis for a claim. Search for it today and that is still roughly what you will be told.
What has changed is that the filed cases are increasingly not about how the device performed. They are about how it was sold: what patients were told it would do, who told them, and what those people were paid. On that theory the events that matter happened before the device was ever implanted — which means a stimulator that never worked well is not a weaker set of facts. It is a different set of facts.
That is why attorneys reviewing these cases are looking at people whose devices simply stopped helping, and not only at people who have had revision surgery.
How these devices were sold
The filed complaints describe a sales process with recurring features, and it is worth knowing what they allege.
A pain physician raises the stimulator — often as a suggestion to learn more, sometimes by speaking with a representative from the device company.
Some filed complaints allege that a representative of the device manufacturer took part in those conversations. That is an allegation, not an established fact. What patients say they were told — about the device’s benefits and about the trial period — is among the questions the litigation raises.
Many patients also describe a trial period that went well, followed by a permanent implant that did not perform the same way. Whether and why that happened is another question the filed cases raise.
Why so many people were offered one after 2013
In September 2013 the FDA required class-wide safety labeling changes for extended-release and long-acting opioids. In 2016 the CDC issued prescribing guidelines that accelerated tapering nationwide. Many chronic pain patients were moved off medication they had taken for years, and spinal cord stimulation was among the alternatives offered.
In a 2018 investigation by the Associated Press and NBC, more than half of the injured patients interviewed said they felt pressured to get a stimulator because they feared their doctors would cut off their pain medication.
If that is how you ended up with one, your experience was a common one.
The California record
Medicare publishes what it pays for, procedure by procedure, state by state. Here is what that record shows for spinal cord stimulators in California.
In 2024, Medicare paid for 2,099 people in California to receive a stimulator pulse generator, and 819 people to have stimulator leads surgically removed or revised.
That is 819 lead removals or revisions against 2,099 implants — a ratio of 39 per 100. Nationally the figure is 31 per 100. California removes and revises these devices at a higher rate than the country as a whole.
The other thing the record shows is when this happened. In 2013, Medicare paid for 1,017 generator implants in California. By 2019 that number had reached 2,368 — more than double in six years. The national figure followed the same curve, from 15,275 to 30,432.
Those are the same six years in which chronic pain patients across the country were being tapered off opioid medication.
| Medicare Part B beneficiaries | 2013 | 2019 | 2024 | National 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Generator implants (CPT 63685) | 1,017 | 2,368 | 2,099 | 27,107 |
| Lead removals + revisions (CPT 63661–63664) | 434 | 790 | 819 | 8,523 |
These figures count Medicare patients only — roughly a third of everyone who receives one of these devices — so they are a floor, not a total. Removals in a given year are of devices implanted in earlier years, so this is a running rate, not a failure rate for any one year’s implants. Medicare does not publish counts below 11 patients; cells marked —* fall below that threshold. Implant volumes and opioid prescribing are shown together because they happened together; that is not by itself proof that one caused the other.
Source: CMS, Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners — by Geography and Service, 2013–2024. CPT 63685 (generator insertion/replacement), 63661 and 63662 (lead removal), 63663 and 63664 (lead revision/replacement). Retrieved August 15, 2026.
How these figures were computed — sources, methods, and limitations
Which stimulator do I have?
Most patients don’t know, and that is normal — the surgeon chose it. Four companies make nearly all of them: Boston Scientific, Abbott (formerly St. Jude Medical), Medtronic, and Nevro, which Globus Medical acquired in April 2025.
Four places to look:
- The patient identification card you were given after implantation. It lists the manufacturer and model.
- The charger or the remote. The brand is printed on it.
- The phone app, if you were set up with one.
- Your operative report. Your surgeon’s office is required to provide your records on request. The implant is listed by manufacturer, model, and serial number.
If none of those are available, the manufacturer is recorded in the implant log of the hospital or surgery center where the procedure was done.
Who is included in the filed cases?
Plaintiffs in the pending cases commonly received a spinal cord stimulator from one of the four manufacturers — Boston Scientific, Abbott (St. Jude), Medtronic, or Nevro — and experienced one or more of the following:
- Revision, replacement, or removal (explant) surgery
- Electrical shocks, jolts, or burning at the battery site
- Lead migration or fracture shown on imaging
- Infection requiring treatment or surgery
- New weakness, numbness, paralysis, or bowel or bladder problems
- A device that simply stopped relieving pain — with or without a follow-up procedure
Revision surgery is not required for a case to be reviewed in the filed litigation, and the filed cases are not limited to any one failure type. An attorney licensed in California can evaluate whether a particular experience supports a claim.
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
If you’re reading this for someone else
A lot of people reach this page on behalf of a parent or a spouse — usually the person who drove them to the appointments and watched what happened afterward.
You may be carrying some guilt about having encouraged the surgery. What you are describing — a device presented as the last option that works, sold by someone whose job was to sell it — is the ordinary story here, not the exception.
You are also usually the only person who can answer the questions that end up mattering most: what they could do before, what they can do now, how far they can walk, how many days they do not get out of bed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources (3)
- CMS Medicare Outpatient Hospitals by Provider and Service, CY2024 (APC 5464/5465; Medicare fee-for-service floors; small counts suppressed).
- U.S. District Court dockets via PACER/RECAP (MDL 3181; district filings as cited).
- FDA MAUDE and Recall databases, product code LGW.
Some matters may be referred to other lawyers.
Attorney Advertising. Marin & Murphy Law Firm is licensed only in Rhode Island, South Carolina, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and is not licensed to practice law in California. This page is provided for general informational purposes only. It is not legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and does not constitute an offer to represent any California resident. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
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Marin & Murphy Law Firm attorneys are licensed in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and South Carolina. We are not licensed in California. The firm does not accept California legal matters; inquiries from California residents are referred to attorneys licensed in California. This page is attorney advertising and is provided for general information; it is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship.