A Tennessee couple seeks compensation for the hip replacement problems they say were caused by a poorly designed hip implant.

Plaintiffs Vickie and Anthony L. bring this hip implant lawsuit against Stryker Orthopaedics and its related companies. Stryker manufactures the Rejuvenate artificial hip at issue in the couple’s claim.

Vickie says she underwent hip replacement surgery in July 2011, receiving a Rejuvenate implant in her left hip. She later developed hip replacement problems that necessitated removal of the implant in June 2015.

Blood samples showed Vickie was suffering from excessive levels of chromium and cobalt, which she was told were traceable to a defect in the Rejuvenate system.

Vickie now says she suffered injuries resulting from both the original implantation and the removal surgery.

She says she could not have become aware of the problems with the Rejuvenate system until the product was recalled from the market. Now, following the recall, she faults Stryker for her hip replacement problems.

The couple’s hip implant lawsuit raises claims based on theories of negligence, products liability, failure to warn, breach of warranty, misrepresentation, and loss of consortium.

They are also making claims under the consumer protection laws of their home state of Tennessee, which may provide for punitive damages, reimbursement of attorneys’ fees, and triple the amount of compensatory damages.

The Stryker Hip Replacement MDL

Vickie and Anthony’s hip replacement lawsuit is one of many such claims in a multidistrict litigation, or MDL, still pending in a federal court in Minnesota.

The MDL was established in June 2013 to coordinate pretrial proceedings in claims over the Stryker Rejuvenate and ABG II hip replacement systems.

In cases like these, when several similar Stryker hip replacement lawsuits have been filed at roughly the same time, the federal court system sometimes combines them into an MDL to eliminate redundant discovery requests, prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings, and conserve the court’s resources as well as those of the parties.

According to the Master Long Form Complaint from the Stryker hip replacement MDL, the Rejuvenate and ABG II implants may both shed metal ions into the patient’s body after implantation.

The presence of metal migrating freely about the implant site can lead to accumulation of fluid near the joint, the formation of pseudotumors, and the death of nearby muscle and bone tissue.

These hip replacement problems have been severe enough in some cases to require the recipient to undergo further surgery to remove the Stryker hip replacement implant.

The plaintiffs have generally alleged that design flaws are to blame for the hip replacement problems associated with these implants.

They allege that Stryker failed to warn patients about the associated problems, even though the company allegedly knew about them.

Stryker agreed in November 2014 to settle thousands of these hip implant lawsuits for a total of $1.4 billion dollars. The settlement applied to existing claims in the Minnesota MDL as well as other hip implant lawsuits that had been consolidated into a multicounty litigation in New Jersey state court.

The settlement applied to patients who underwent revision surgery before November 3, 2014. It has not precluded future claims from being filed over the Rejuvenate or ABG II implants.

The Stryker Metal Hip Replacement Lawsuit is filed within In Re: Stryker Rejuvenate and ABG II Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 12-2441, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.