March 31, 2025
A California federal judge on Monday certified a class of thousands of hospitals alleging Intuitive Surgical monopolized the market for robotic surgical tools by blocking third-party repairs and tying services to robot purchases, finding the case raises common antitrust questions that can be resolved on a classwide basis.
In a 26-page order, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the Northern District of California certified a class of potentially thousands of entities that purchased Intuitive Surgical Inc.’s da Vinci service and its EndoWrist products in the U.S. from May 21, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2021, excluding hospitals run by the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.
The ruling is the latest development in antitrust litigation launched in May 2021 alleging that Intuitive Surgical’s purported anticompetitive contracts unlawfully inflated prices for thousands of healthcare providers nationwide. The suit at hand was brought by customers, while Intuitive Surgical’s rival, Surgical Instrument Service Co. Inc., filed its own parallel antitrust lawsuit against the company the same month asserting similar antitrust claims.
Intuitive Surgical makes the da Vinci surgical robot system for minimally invasive soft tissue surgery, along with surgical instruments called EndoWrists, which are attached to the da Vinci’s mechanical arms and use fine wire cables that thread through a complex pulley system, allowing the surgeon to move the surgical instruments with great precision.
But the hospitals allege in their suit that the company has held an illegal monopoly over the relevant market by implementing and enforcing agreements that require purchasers to use Intuitive Surgical as the sole service provider for all da Vinci systems and by prohibiting purchasers from either servicing the robot themselves or hiring an independent robot repair company, which is often cheaper.
The hospitals’ suit asserted antitrust claims of tying, exclusive dealing and monopolization for servicing the da Vinci robots in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. But after surviving multiple rounds of pleadings, the parties filed dueling summary judgment bids, seeking early wins on certain claims.
In March 2024, the judge granted the hospital plaintiffs partial summary judgment, finding that the da Vinci surgical robot and EndoWrist instruments are separate products, but the judge refused to rule on the market issues raised by the hospitals and denied the company’s dueling summary judgment motion.
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The class is represented by Jeffrey J. Corrigan and Jeffrey L. Spector of Spector Roseman & Kodroff PC, by Gary I. Smith Jr., Samuel Maida and Reena A. Gambhir of Hausfeld LLP, by Benjamin D. Brown, Daniel McCuaig, Manuel J. Dominguez and Christopher J. Bateman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, and by Michael J. Boni, Joshua D. Snyder and John E. Sindoni of Boni Zack & Snyder LLC.
Read Buyer Class Of Surgical Robots Is Certified in Antitrust Fight.