A man from Kentucky has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Olympus Medical Systems Corp. after his wife died of a severe infection following a routine ERCP procedure.
The lawsuit alleges that the reusable Olympus duodenoscope that was used in her ERCP was contaminated with bacteria from previous patients.
He accuses Olympus of selling a medical device with design defects that may result in bacteria surviving the cleaning process and spreading from one patient to another.
The case was originally filed in May 2026 in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, then moved to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on August 28, 2026 — Case No. 2:26-cv-06451.
According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff underwent an ERCP (endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography) in May 2025 using an Olympus TJF-Q190V duodenovideoscope.
The procedure was normal with no complications, until later that evening, when she had to be rushed to the emergency department due to severe abdominal pain. She was diagnosed with sepsis.
Testing revealed that her sepsis was caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae, the same type of bacteria that was transmitted by the TJF-Q180V scope in an outbreak in the Netherlands in 2015.
Tragically, within 36 hours of her ERCP, she was in septic shock with multi-system organ failure due to the infection. She was airlifted to another hospital, but the infection persisted.
She suffered through multiple abscess pockets, a colon perforation, 7 major abdominal surgeries, and “endured periods of having her abdomen left open in attempts to resolve the infection,” according to the lawsuit.
Her husband’s lawsuit claims that the endoscope was designed with deep grooves and intricate moving parts that made it challenging to effectively sterilize between patients, even when hospitals followed Olympus’s reprocessing instructions exactly.
The lawsuit also accuses Olympus of negligence, negligent failure to warn, negligent design and manufacturing defect, fraud, design defect, manufacturing defect, breach of warranty, loss of consortium, and wrongful death.
Olympus is facing a growing number of lawsuits alleging that dangerous bacteria, biofilms, microbes, tissue, other debris and biological material from one patient can remain trapped in the scope, especially in narrow channels or other components that are difficult to clean.
Individuals who developed sepsis, bloodstream infections, pneumonia, organ failure or other serious complications after a medical procedure using a reusable scope may have legal options.
Source: Olympus Scope Wrongful Death Lawsuit Filed Over ERCP Infection