Without Shawn Collins, a Chicago attorney and founder of The Collins Law Firm in Naperville, Illinois, the North American Spine Society would not likely exist, and the development of modern spine surgery would have turned out very differently.
Shawn Collins died on December 15, 2024, ten days before Christmas, at the age of 67 from heart disease. Thinking about the effect his life has had on the broader spine surgery community, I’m reminded of George Bailey in the film “It’s a Wonderful Life”, who had a chance to see what his community of Bedford Falls would have become had he not lived—and how much his neighbors and community benefited because he did.
That’s Shawn Collins. Ask 1,000 senior spine and neurosurgeons to explain Shawn’s role in spine surgery, I doubt even 3% know who he was and what he meant to each of them.
Here, then, with help from Eric Muehlbauer, Executive Director of the North American Spine Society (NASS) and three past NASS presidents, Hansen Yuan, M.D., David Wong, M.D. and David Fardon, M.D., is OTW’s remembrance of Shawn Collins, an extraordinarily consequential attorney for the spine surgery community.
When the Practice of Spine Surgery Nearly Died
By 1995, 3,238 lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for employing pedicle screw fixation in spine fusion surgery had been filed across the United States.
The claims against surgeons, surgeon societies, and suppliers seemed insurmountable. The plaintiff made these arguments to juries around the United States:
- Spine fusion surgeries were unsuccessful. Patients, as the juries could plainly see, were experiencing terrible post-op pain and too often were permanently disabled.
- Pedicle screws were not FDA approved. Proof point: an FDA letter which said pedicle screws were “not substantially equivalent” to other spinal fixation devices. Further, said the FDA, these screws posed “potential risks not exhibited by other spinal fixation systems,” including “screw failure.”
- Pedicle screws, said the FDA, required “premarket approval” before they could “be legally marketed” for spinal indications.
- Pedicle screw manufacturers knowingly sold experimental, unapproved, and therefore illegal implants which left patients permanently disabled.
- Suppliers, surgeon societies, and the surgeons themselves participated in this illegal activity by teaching surgeons to use these investigational, unapproved devices.
(To learn the full story of the Pedicle Screw Mass Tort Litigation and how, ultimately, the attorney’s defending spine surgery won every single case, but one: click here.
Eric Muehlbauer, just six months into his job as director of the newly founded North American Spine Society, found himself in a trial by fire.
“I don’t remember exactly when we first were served with the pedicle screw litigation. Probably February of 1995,” recalls Eric Muehlbauer, just six months in his new position as director of the North American Spine Society. “We started to get boxes of lawsuits served on us. A box literally filled with 200 lawsuits. I had to sign for them. We ended up getting sued 522 times.”
The plaintiff’s theory was that since NASS had sold pedicle screw manufacturer’s booth space, that the Society was party to commercializing unapproved spinal implants and therefore a fraud on the marketplace.
“It was shocking. I didn’t expect to be, you know, under siege in my first six months on the job.”
NASS’s offices were, at the time, still in the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) building as an affiliate specialty society and Muehlbauer had been hired by AAOS to transition NASS out of the Academy.
Rick Peterson, AAOS’ attorney, who’d also been legally served, called Muehlbauer and told him to find NASS a lawyer by one o’clock that same afternoon. All defendants to the litigation—the manufacturers and the societies—were holding a call in just a few hours.
Luckily, Muehlbauer had met Shawn Collins, a litigator and CPA, a few months earlier. Quick call and in time for the afternoon meeting, NASS had their attorney.
“At first I was really just scrambling to understand what was going on and then look at what’s our insurance coverage. Credit the Academy, they gave us great advice. At the peak of the litigation, we were getting bills of $125,000 a month.”
Shawn Collins Suits up for Battle
During the litigation, the mass tort plaintiff attorneys tried to paint NASS’s president, Dr. Hansen Yuan, as the lead surgeon “bad guy.” Collins saw it coming and, as Muehlbauer recalls, “went right at them,” fighting tooth and nail, beating back even, for example, references to Dr. Yuan’s ethnicity.
Hansen Yuan, M.D., remembers how he first met Collins and how this young attorney, literally, saved both NASS and Dr. Yuan.
“I met Shawn over the phone. He eventually guided me through several hundred lawsuits which had been filed against me personally because I represented NASS,” recalls Yuan. Shawn was NASS’s hero and my guiding light. He brought me through those trials.”
“Shawn always gave me sound advice and prepared me well for many depositions and court appearances in Philadelphia and New Orleans. Because of Shawn, we won each case. We had more than a year of depositions and trials.”
The lawsuits against Dr. Yuan represented $1 million of personal liability. As he recalls today, “That money would not have been covered under my medical malpractice coverage since it would have been a civil judgement. Then, one day, Shawn called me to say that we WON!!! I am SO grateful to Shawn who championed our cause of spine surgery. All of spine surgery should know about Shawn!!”
Neither Collins nor Director Muehlbauer ever talked settlement. It was a brutal back alley fight, and Collins didn’t flinch. The same could not be said for other counsel.
One meeting in particular stands out to Muehlbauer. “I remember there was a hearing that I had to attend in Philadelphia in front of a three-judge panel. At the court, before proceedings started, the AAOS attorney tried to introduce me to one of the other attorneys. I’m about to shake his hand and he is introduced to me as one of the plaintiff attorneys. I didn’t wanna shake his hand. I said, ‘What are you doing?’”
Turns out, the AAOS attorney had been talking settlement—potentially at the expense of the other medical societies. AAOS’ leadership eventually put a stop to those back-channel conversations.
Muehlbauer credits Collins and NASS’s leadership for standing tall in that moment. “Hanson Yuan really stood up and was a leader.”
Paying the $2 Million Legal Bill
Leading the defense was Sofamor Danek and its leadership team—Ron Pickard, Alan Olsen, LD Beard, Bob Rylee and lead counsel Stephen Phillips. Ron Pickard remembers the calls he started getting from his customers, individuals spine and neurosurgeons. Remembers Pickard, “Patient’s doctors and their attorneys were calling us saying ‘look, can you help us with discovery information.’”
“Of course, our attorneys were saying ‘no, no, you’ve got to shield yourself. You’ve got to let them run their litigation, you run ours.’”
But Bob Rylee, who’d been through the breast implant mass tort gauntlet told Pickard, “That’s the biggest mistake we made at Dow Corning. We actually had a separation between us and the customer. Even though the science was not on the plaintiff’s side. They were able to divide us from our customer.”
Pickard told his lawyers, “Yes, we’re going to share information, yes, we’re going to work with them. Figure out a way to do it. If there is a risk associated with that, we’ll take that risk.”
Hansen Yuan, M.D., then president of North American Spine Society, discussed NASS’s financial plight with Pickard, “I’ve run up all these bills at NASS. I’ve got more than $1 million of legal expenses. NASS needs help.”
Pickard responded, saying, “Hansen, don’t worry about it, I’ll cover it.” He hung up and thought to himself, “What in the devil did I just do?” He went the next morning to talk to his chief financial officer, Laurance Fairey, and told him what he’d done. Fairey reminded Pickard, “Don’t you need board approval for that?” To which Pickard replied, “Probably, but it’s done now.”
Looking back, Pickard makes the point that while Sofamor Danek and NASS may have had different strategies, where it made sense, and when the strategies coincided, then “We were executing on the most important strategy of all, the one we had from Day One—the customer is #1.”
Ultimately Sofamor Danek did not contribute to paying NASS’s legal bills, which topped $2 million. NASS had insurance, but that also needed Collin’s help.
“Shawn found us the legal counsel (Paula Morency) to fight a separate battle with Chubb, NASS’s insurance company. We ended up getting about $1.5 million of our legal expenses back—but not without a fight”, remembers Muehlbauer.
Spine Surgery’s Field General
With Shawn Collins, Eric Muehlbauer, Hansen Yuan, Jeff Saal, and Sofamor Danek, NASS never came close to throwing in the towel.
David Fardon, M.D., assistant professor, Rush University Medical Center and former NASS president, remembers Shawn and the trial by fire that NASS went through. “NASS’s existence was threatened by the pedicle screw mass tort litigation in 1995-96. NASS’s functions of patient care, education, and research could have been compromised. We needed a lawyer. Eric [Muehlbauer] found us Shawn Collins.”
“Shawn’s enthusiasm, skill, and energy cleared the air so we could concentrate on our practices. He led us, along with other medical professional societies who had been unjustly threatened, to ultimately be rid of the scourge of unwarranted litigation and to serve as beacons to aid other societies. Shawn remained our trusted counsellor and our friend. We will be forever grateful. We will miss him sorely.”
David Wong, M.D., former NASS president also has searing memories of the pedicle screw litigation and Shawn’s leadership. “Shawn was a tower of strength during one of the most tumultuous times for NASS (as were all the presidents thru that whole debacle, with special gratitude to Jeff Saal who wasn’t a surgeon but recognized the injustice right at the beginning and put his weight solidly behind defending NASS’s position to stand and fight).”
“Shawn’s team was great. Don’t even want to think what the face of deformity/fusion surgery would be like today if pedicle screws had been taken off the market. Definitely one of the few spine technologies that has truly stood the test of time.”
One of Shawn Collin’s accomplishments in particular stands out to Dr. Wong. One claim the plaintiff’s bar threw at NASS was that spine surgeons and the companies who supplied pedicle screws were implanting “unapproved” medical devices and, therefore, engaging in an “illegal” practice.
The truth, of course, was very different. In fact, pedicle screw fixation was a global practice in spine fusion surgery pre-1978 and therefore qualified under FDA rules as a predicate device for commercial sale.
What the Collins team did next was legendary. “The AO manual showed AO screws used as pedicle screws with a plate (pre Steffee and Simmons),” remembers Dr. Wong.
“First publication of the AO Manual was 1970 so we were able to argue that this constituted a Predicate (pre-1978 device). But the other side argued that a book from a Swiss group was not disseminated in the U.S. (one of the criteria for a predicate device). Incredibly, Shawn’s team found all the North American sales figures for the AO manual from 1970 up to the time of the litigation in 1996.”
“Tens of thousands of the AO manual were sold in the U.S. Shawn’s team crushed the argument that there was no U.S. dissemination.”
Finally, in 1996, the litigation ended for NASS. AcroMed negotiated a settlement with the plaintiff’s attorneys. “Sofamor Danek said they would never settle. We appreciated the fact that AcroMed wanted to extricate us from this,” remembers Muehlbauer, “and we were released from those 522 lawsuits.”
Shawn Collins
Collins and his firm would stay on as NASS counsel for almost three decades.
Born on December 8, 1957, Shawn was the oldest son of Jack and Rosemarie Collins and grew up in Lisle, Illinois—a town 26 miles due west of Chicago.
Early on, Collins demonstrated an extraordinary work ethic. By fifth grade, Shawn had created and managed two businesses: a successful paper route and a neighborhood lawn mowing business. In eighth grade, Shawn applied for and obtained an academic scholarship to high school at the prestigious St. Ignatius College Prep that required him to commute to Chicago each day for two years from his Lisle home.
Shawn played basketball, starting all four years in high school. He was accepted into Notre Dame University—paid his own way through—and graduated summa cum laude in 1980. After a short stint as a CPA, he entered the University of Chicago Law School, where he graduated in 1986.
Collins began his legal career at Mayer Brown and Platt but left in 1992 to set up his own firm, The Collins Law Firm in Naperville, Illinois. Aside from his work for NASS and his role in saving NASS and all spine surgeons who were caught up in the 1995-1997 pedicle screw mass tort firestorm, Collin’s firm led the legal fight on against the Lockformer Corporation site that contaminated drinking water in his hometown of Lisle.
More recently, Shawn and his firm were leading trial team members of the 2022 verdict in the Sterigenics environmental litigation which resulted in the largest single verdict for families in Illinois history.
While Collins never practiced law for accolades, he received the 2023 Trial Lawyer Excellence Award from the Jury Verdict Reporter, was chosen as a national Environmental MVP in 2023 by Law 360 and had been selected as the 2025 president of the Environmental Trial Lawyers.
Shawn Collins may never have known how fully his life benefited so many, indeed, countless other people. But, somewhere in heaven, a bell rang, and an angel was born on December 15, 2024.
