As Michele Meyer navigated the hallways of Congress earlier this month, meeting lawmakers and telling her story, she felt as though her daughter Katie was beside her, urging her on. "She would have been right there," said Meyer, of Cambridge, Minn. "She was very outgoing, exuberant, true to herself and her own beliefs." But Katie, 30, died in 2008 after surgery to remove a heart defibrillator wire made by Medtronic Inc. that had been recalled for safety reasons. She was joined in Washington by Mark and Janice Baird of Oakdale, who lost their 16-year-old son Robert after his Medtronic pacemaker malfunctioned. The families want to restore the right to sue manufacturers of faulty medical devices, such as pacemakers and heart defibrillators.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in a Medtronic case that makers of certain devices -- those that require the most stringent kind of regulatory review before approval -- were largely immune from product liability claims. The medical technology industry, hampered by hundreds of such claims, supported the decision, saying the millions of dollars used to defend these lawsuits would be better deployed to develop new technologies to treat patients. However, a bill in Congress called the Medical Device Safety Act would restore the right to sue for some patients who were harmed by a device that malfunctioned. The medical technology industry opposes the legislation.