- Stephanie Guarisco claimed in a lawsuit that an eye had to be removed due to her Hubble contacts.
- She accused the company of selling “unsafe, defective” contact lenses that left her in severe pain.
- Vision Path, Hubble’s owner, told CBS News it was investigating Guarisco’s allegations.
A New Mexico woman has filed a complaint alleging she was sold defective contact lenses that led to the loss of her eye.
In a lawsuit filed on June 30 in the New York State Supreme Court, Stephanie Guarisco said contacts she bought from Hubble Contacts caused her severe pain within weeks of using them in 2020.
She alleged that injuries from the lenses led to “multiple emergency room visits, surgical procedures, extreme pain and discomfort, eyesight impairment, and the total loss” of her right eye, according to the suit.
Guarisco is suing Vision Path, Hubble Contacts’ parent company, for consumer fraud and negligence.
According to the complaint, when she received the lenses in January 2020 they lacked instructions for removal, insertion, or cleaning. She stopped wearing them in July that year, per the suit.
Guarisco claimed she began experiencing pain in her left eye that was ultimately diagnosed as an inflamed iris condition called iridocyclitis in August 2020. Just over a year later, after at least seven doctor visits, her right eye was removed, according to the lawsuit.
“Hubble contact lenses were unsafe, defective, and inherently dangerous in that the contact lenses were subject to a high rate of eye infections and corneal damage during normal and customary use,” the complaint stated.
Representatives for Hubble Contacts did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.
Vision Path told CBS News it was unaware of Guarisco’s claims until the lawsuit was filed.
“We began our investigation immediately following. Given the early stages of the case, we are unable to further comment on the specifics of the allegations or the results of our internal investigation,” the statement added.
Guarisco claimed in the lawsuit that her injuries were related to the use of silicon-based polymer Methafilcon A in the lenses. While the Taiwanese-made lenses were approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the complaint alleged that Methafilcon A was “no longer commonly prescribed by for contact lenses in the US.”
David Lever, a partner at the law firm representing Guarisco, told Insider: “We place corrective lenses onto one of the most vulnerable parts of the human body and trust that we will be aided, and not harmed, by them. Companies selling these lenses must be held accountable when they participate in deceptive marketing practices.”
In January 2022 Vision Path paid about $3.5 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that Hubble failed to obtain and verify prescription information from customers’ optometrists.
It also paid about $375,000 in a deceptive trade practices settlement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in June 2022.
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