An Ohio resident has joined the mass of metal hip lawsuits against Biomet, alleging that the company manufactured a dangerously defective hip implant.

This metal hip lawsuit focuses on a metal-on-metal hip joint manufactured by Biomet called the M2a Magnum Hip Implant. As a metal-on-metal hip implant, the M2a belongs to a class of artificial hips that have been under intense scrutiny and the subject of several major lawsuits.

Metal-on-metal hip implants, including Biomet’s M2a, entered the market across from several different brands. While most previous types of artificial hip joints had polymer or even ivory for the moving surface of the joint, metal-on-metal hip implants had two metal faces rubbing against each other.

Manufacturers were able to skip several critical phases of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) testing on the grounds that the new design was “substantially similar” to existing hip joints, despite the fact that the metal-on-metal hip joints had different interfacing surfaces. Allegedly, this new design was more prone to corrosion and fretting, causing the hip implants to fail.

Additionally, metal-on-metal hip joints like those made by Biomet can allegedly cause health problems. Many hip lawsuits have alleged that the grinding of the surfaces of metal hip joints shaves microscopic fragments off the metal surfaces.

Allegedly, these microscopic fragments are much more reactive than solid pieces of the metal hip implant material and can dissolve and form toxic metal ions, causing cancer, pseudotumors and painful reactions around the hip implant.

In this Biomet lawsuit, plaintiff Rita M. echoes many of these allegations. Her Biomet lawsuit alleges that Biomet designed a defective brand of metal hip implant, and then convinced the public that they were safe.

Her Biomet lawsuit holds neither that she nor her physicians would have agreed to the hip implant had they been aware of the risks allegedly associated with the M2a hip implant. She first had her left hip replaced by the Biomet M2a Magnum implant, and then had her right hip replaced in March 2010 with the same model.

In June 2014, Rita had revision surgery to repair her left Biomet hip. Revision surgery can be more technically challenging than the original hip replacement surgery, as there is less of the original bone left for surgeons to work with.

Additionally, Rita’s Biomet lawsuit cites an article from a 2003 issue of the American Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery that indicates that if a patient has one hip revision, they are roughly four times more likely to require a second hip revision surgery.

The Biomet Hip Implant Lawsuit is Case No. 2080 within the larger Biomet MDL, In Re: Biomet M2a Magnum Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2391, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.