Torax Medical built the devices, based those operations in Minnesota, and then told a court it would be unreasonable to be sued there.

A Device That Failed. Then Failed Again.

Craig Dibble trusted a medical device manufactured by Torax Medical, a company headquartered in Minnesota during the time it designed, marketed, and sold that device. The device was implanted in the United Kingdom, and it failed. Dibble then traveled to Colorado, where surgeons removed the failed device and installed a new one. That one also failed to provide adequate relief. He underwent additional testing in Thailand and Japan before eventually filing a lawsuit.

Dibble sued Torax Medical and its parent company Ethicon, Inc. — itself a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson — for negligence and strict liability. He filed in Minnesota, which is precisely where Torax was based when all of the complained-of conduct occurred. The corporations did not dispute that jurisdiction and venue were proper. They simply decided they did not want to be sued there.

Instead of mounting a defense on the merits, Torax and Ethicon leaned on a legal doctrine called “forum non conveniens.” In plain English: they argued that the court they were being sued in was the wrong court, and that Dibble should refile his lawsuit in England. The lower court agreed with them. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals did not.

The Geography Shell Game

The district court’s reasoning was straightforward but fundamentally flawed. It looked at where events in the case occurred: Dibble’s first surgery was in the UK, his second surgery was in Colorado, monitoring happened in Thailand and Japan. The court then treated every single one of those locations as evidence that the case belonged in the United Kingdom.

Colorado is not in the United Kingdom. Thailand is not in the United Kingdom. Japan is not in the United Kingdom. The Eighth Circuit pointed this out with remarkable clarity, noting that contacts in other US states do not make a case more convenient for a British court. The appeals court pointed to prior precedent requiring courts to look at “all contacts between the case and the whole United States,” not just the specific state where the lawsuit was filed versus a foreign country.

The district court’s error was mechanical: it treated “outside Minnesota” as synonymous with “UK advantage,” when those are completely different things. Dibble’s surgery in Colorado actually points toward keeping the case in the United States, where the surgeon, the medical records, and the removed device all exist.

The Non-Financial Ledger

Human Cost

Craig Dibble’s story is not unusual in a way that should be reassuring. It is unusual in a way that should be infuriating. He is a man who needed a medical device to function, trusted a company to build one that worked, and was handed something that failed — not once, but twice. Between those two failures, he traveled across continents: from the United Kingdom to Colorado for surgery, then to Thailand and Japan for follow-up testing and monitoring. He did not take a vacation. He chased a solution that a corporation’s product was supposed to have already provided.

That kind of medical odyssey has a cost that never appears on a corporate balance sheet. It is the cost of disrupted work, of travel expenses, of recovery time in foreign hospitals, of the accumulated anxiety of not knowing whether the second device would hold when the first one did not. The source documents do not itemize Dibble’s personal losses in dollar figures, because the case was dismissed before discovery could surface them. That is precisely the point: the corporations moved to kill the lawsuit before anyone could force them to account for any of it.

The forum non conveniens doctrine, when abused the way Torax and Ethicon attempted to abuse it here, is a tool for exhaustion. Force the plaintiff to refile in a foreign country. Make them retain new lawyers in a jurisdiction they do not live in. Let the statute of limitations clock tick while they navigate an unfamiliar legal system. The Eighth Circuit acknowledged this directly, noting that applying the doctrine “makes it possible for plaintiffs to lose out completely, through the running of the statute of limitations in the forum finally deemed appropriate.” That is not a side effect. For a corporation, that outcome is the whole strategy.

Dibble pushed back. He asked the court for leave to amend his complaint, to add more details tying the case to Minnesota. The district court denied that request too, calling any amendment “futile” based on arguments the corporations made at the hearing. A man already failed twice by a corporate product then watched a court shut the door on his ability to even explain himself more fully. The Eighth Circuit found that denial wrong as well, reversing the entire dismissal and sending the case back for a real analysis, one where the corporations actually have to carry the burden the law requires of them.

Legal Receipts

Direct From the Record

“A defendant invoking forum non conveniens ordinarily bears a heavy burden in opposing the plaintiff’s chosen forum.” Sinochem Int’l Co. v. Malaysia Int’l Shipping Corp., 549 U.S. 422, 430 (2007), cited by the Eighth Circuit in its reversal opinion

“Unless the balance of these factors is strongly in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff’s choice of forum should rarely be disturbed.” Est. of I.E.H. v. CKE Rests., Holdings, Inc., 995 F.3d 659, 663 (8th Cir. 2021), cited by the Eighth Circuit to rebuke the district court’s approach

“Applying the doctrine results in dismissal of the case, which inconveniences plaintiffs in several respects and even ‘makes it possible for plaintiffs to lose out completely, through the running of the statute of limitations in the forum finally deemed appropriate.'” Atl. Marine Const. Co. v. U.S. Dist. Ct. for W. Dist. of Texas, 571 U.S. 49, 66 n.8 (2013), cited by the Eighth Circuit to explain why the burden on defendants must be heavy

“The district court should have analyzed the forum non conveniens question by looking at all contacts between the case and the whole United States.” Wilson v. Island Seas Invs., Ltd., 590 F.3d 1264, 1271 (11th Cir. 2009), cited by the Eighth Circuit in finding the district court’s analysis was fundamentally flawed

“Defendants did not present additional information to the district court, and we are not convinced the district court held Defendants to their burden of persuasion on all elements of the forum non conveniens analysis based on the record.” Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Opinion in Dibble v. Torax Medical, Inc.; Ethicon, Inc., No. 24-1385, Filed August 7, 2025

Societal Impact Mapping

Economic Inequality: The Courthouse as a Weapon

Power Imbalance

The forum non conveniens doctrine exists for legitimate reasons. Courts should not be forced to manage cases that have almost no connection to their jurisdiction. But the gap between the doctrine’s legitimate purpose and its weaponized use against individual plaintiffs is enormous, and this case illustrates that gap precisely.

Johnson & Johnson reported global revenues of approximately $85.2 billion in 2023 (enough for every person in the United States to receive a check for roughly $255). Torax Medical and Ethicon operate with the full legal infrastructure of one of the largest healthcare corporations on the planet behind them. Craig Dibble is a private individual who lives in Japan. When a corporation tells a plaintiff to refile in a foreign country, it knows what it is doing. The cost of retaining lawyers in England, navigating a foreign procedural system, and managing international litigation is trivially small for J&J. For the individual plaintiff, it can be financially and logistically impossible.

The Eighth Circuit explicitly recognized the economic cruelty embedded in this tactic, noting that forum non conveniens dismissals can result in plaintiffs losing their cases entirely due to statutes of limitations running out before they can refile. That is a foreseeable outcome, and corporations with legal teams the size of small law firms understand it perfectly when they file these motions. The only question the court left open is whether Torax and Ethicon will be held to their actual burden when this case returns to the district court.

Public Health: When the Device That Fixes You Breaks

Medical Device Accountability

Medical device manufacturers occupy a uniquely consequential position in public health. Unlike a pharmaceutical company that sells you a pill you can stop taking, a device company may sell you something that gets surgically attached to your body. When it fails, removal requires another surgery. Dibble’s case involved two separate surgical procedures as a direct consequence of device failure: one to remove the first failed device, one to implant a replacement that also failed to provide adequate relief.

The public health stakes extend far beyond one man. Forum non conveniens dismissals at this stage of litigation — before discovery, before depositions, before any internal documents are produced — keep corporate conduct safely hidden. No one outside Torax and Ethicon knows what internal testing showed, what complaints were logged, what the marketing materials claimed versus what the device delivered. A successful forum dismissal means that information stays buried, and other patients using similar devices remain uninformed about what the manufacturer may have known.

The Eighth Circuit’s reversal reopens the possibility that this evidence surfaces. That is a public health outcome, not just a legal one. Any patient who has had a Torax device implanted has a stake in whether this case proceeds to discovery.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now?

Accountability Roadmap

The case returns to the District of Minnesota for a new forum non conveniens analysis. This time, the district court must hold Torax and Ethicon to their actual legal burden and weigh the factors correctly. If the corporations want to send this case to England, they now have to actually prove why England is the right place, not just argue it.

Who to Watch

The corporations in this case operate under the following corporate structure:

• Torax Medical, Inc.: The device manufacturer, formerly based in Minnesota during the complained-of conduct. Now a subsidiary of Ethicon.
• Ethicon, Inc.: Parent company of Torax, based in New Jersey. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.
• Johnson & Johnson: The ultimate parent corporation, one of the largest healthcare conglomerates on the planet.

Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction

The appeals court has handed Dibble a second chance. But courts move slowly, corporations have unlimited resources, and individual plaintiffs do not. If you or someone you know has had a Torax Medical device implanted and experienced failure, document everything: dates, medical records, communications with the manufacturer, and every surgery. Connect with a patient advocacy organization. Find others with the same device. Collective documentation is what turns one lawsuit into a pattern the FDA and DOJ cannot ignore. Local organizing and mutual aid networks can help cover costs that corporations count on individuals being unable to sustain alone.