A nationwide $60 million settlement of a surgical mesh liability case against CR Bard includes New Hampshire and involves a suit in the Granite State.

In the case of CR Bard, now owned by Becton Dickinson, a New Jersey-based company that earned $17.3 billion in revenue last year, attorneys general of 48 states and the District of Columbia, charged that Bard downplayed the risk that its transvaginal surgical mesh devices — used to treat urinary incontinence by strengthening the vaginal floor — eroded though organs, causing pain during sexual intercourse and voiding dysfunction.

The cost to repair such damage costs the state money, since it funds Medicaid and state insurance health plans. According to state law, New Hampshire’s $661,071 share of the settlement would go to the Consumer Protection Bureau.

CR Bard is also the target of similar claims by individual plaintiffs, including about 5,000 federal cases in Ohio and some 13,000 cases in Rhode Island, where CR Bard manufactured the product, according to Jonathan Orant, a lead attorney in the case.

Bard doesn’t make the product any more. It withdrew its mesh from the market in July 2012, after losing a $3.6 million verdict to just one woman who had complications with the device, the first manufacturer to lose such a case.

“Bard and BD have denied any wrongdoing and all allegations included in the litigation and chose to settle the matter to avoid the time and expense of further litigation,” said the company in a statement.

Other companies are also targeted by transvaginal mesh lawsuits, such as Johnson & Johnson, Endo Pharmaceuticals and Boston Scientific. The latter company has a facility in Manchester. Orant estimates that there have been some 150,000 transvaginal cases filed over the last decade or so. — BOB SANDERS