No butt plug MRI lawsuit has been publicly confirmed. The underlying incident is real and documented in an FDA adverse event report from April 2023, but the widely shared claims about a filed lawsuit, a named attorney, and a mislabeled “100% silicone” product have never been verified in any court record or by any outlet that looked for one.
What the FDA Report Confirms
The confirmed facts are narrow. According to a report filed in the FDA’s MAUDE database, a 22-year-old woman underwent an MRI on April 7, 2023, without disclosing that she had a butt plug inserted. When the technician began pulling the table out of the machine, the patient started screaming. She reported nausea, pain, and near-fainting, was evaluated by a radiologist on-site, and was transported to a hospital by ambulance.
The report was filed on April 14, 2023, and received by the FDA on April 18. The facility said it had been unable to reach the patient for follow-up, and no supplemental reports were filed. The FDA classified the event as a “Serious Injury” but coded the device problem as “Adverse Event Without Identified Device or Use Problem.” The report does not name the product’s manufacturer, identify the material the device was made of, or describe the specific internal injuries the patient sustained.
Everything beyond those facts, including the product’s composition, the manufacturer’s identity, the precise injuries, and the existence of any legal proceeding, remains unverified.
Where the Lawsuit Claim Came From
The lawsuit story spread through social media, not through court filings. A since-deleted Reddit post on April 8, 2023, appears to have been one of the earliest public references. On May 9, 2023, a Twitter user posted a screenshot of a text message claiming that the patient had suffered “major injuries” when the metallic object was pulled through her body, and that an attorney named Chris Goodnow had taken her case against the manufacturer for mislabeling the product as “100% silicone.” Some retellings described the object moving “at the speed of sound” and traveling from the rectum into the chest cavity.
Snopes investigated and rated the claims unverifiable. It found no record of an attorney by that name and no social media presence for the person supposedly handling the case. The original poster of the viral tweet later called it a “shitpost.” Snopes concluded that the underlying FDA report was real but that the specific claims about the severity of the injuries, the product mislabeling, and the existence of a lawsuit were “wholly unconfirmed” and rested on friend-of-a-friend narratives.
In January 2025, the New York Post and Medical Daily ran stories that blended the confirmed FDA report with the unverified viral claims, repeating the attorney’s name and the lawsuit assertion without identifying any defendant, court, or case number. Gizmodo covered the same story but flagged the lawsuit claims as unconfirmed and noted it could not verify the named lawyer’s existence.
As of 2026, no public court record, docket entry, settlement, or filed legal document connected to the incident has been identified.
Who Could Be Liable If a Case Were Filed
Even without a confirmed suit, the facts point to two distinct liability theories.
The first is product liability against the manufacturer. If a butt plug was marketed as entirely silicone but contained ferromagnetic metal, the manufacturer could face claims for defective design, failure to warn, or misrepresentation. That theory depends on proving the product actually contained undisclosed metal, which the FDA report does not establish.
The second is medical malpractice against the imaging facility or its staff for failing to detect the metallic object before the scan. MRI facilities use screening questionnaires, ferromagnetic detection wands, and clothing changes to catch metal before a patient enters the scanner room. Standard screening tools focus on surgical implants, metallic foreign body injuries, and medical devices, and a review of the literature found no specific reference to sex toys in typical screening protocols.
Both theories run into the patient’s own conduct. The FDA report is explicit that the patient “did not disclose” the inserted device during screening. Whether that was intentional concealment, forgetfulness, or ignorance of the product’s metallic content would matter in any legal proceeding. In states that follow comparative negligence rules, a patient’s failure to disclose a known metallic object could reduce or bar recovery against a medical provider. It would not automatically shield a manufacturer that mislabeled its product, because the mislabeling claim doesn’t depend on what the patient told the technician.
Why “100% Silicone” Mislabeling Isn’t Clearly Illegal
The viral version of the story treats the product liability claim as straightforward: the label said silicone, the object contained metal, therefore the manufacturer is liable. The regulatory reality is messier.
Sex toys in the United States sit in a regulatory gray area. The FDA classifies sex devices as medical devices only when they are marketed for therapeutic purposes. Manufacturers routinely avoid that classification by labeling products “for novelty use only,” which shifts oversight to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The CPSC has no sex-toy-specific safety standards and does not require the material testing or labeling accuracy that applies to children’s toys.
A 2023 study published in Chemosphere found phthalates in tested sex toys at concentrations that would be illegal in children’s products under federal law, which caps phthalate content at 0.1% by weight. One product advertised as “phthalate-free” actually contained the chemicals. The average phthalate concentration in plastic sex toys has been measured at 39%, with some products reaching 77%.
A 2025 Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems analysis argued that the FDA already has statutory authority to regulate sex toys more broadly, noting that courts have interpreted the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to cover non-therapeutic products that affect the body’s structure, and that breast implants are already regulated as medical devices despite not being therapeutic. Under current practice, though, a sex toy manufacturer faces no federal requirement to accurately disclose its product’s material composition. A “100% silicone” claim on a product containing metal would still be actionable under general state consumer protection and product liability law, but not under any sex-toy-specific federal rule, because none exists.
Current Status
The FDA adverse event report is genuine and public. The patient’s medical outcome is unknown from official records because the facility could not reach her for follow-up. No manufacturer has been publicly identified, no attorney has been confirmed to represent the patient, and no court filing has surfaced. Anyone searching for the case should treat the lawsuit itself as an unverified claim originating from a social media post the poster later described as a joke.