A Texas jury ruled in favor DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. and has dismissed the plaintiff’s claims in the first DePuy metal hip replacement bellwether trial.

At issue were allegations that DePuy, the Johnson & Johnson orthopedic subsidiary, knowingly manufactured and sold defective metal hip implants. This early win for J&J and DePuy will present challenges for plaintiffs’ attorneys in future DePuy Pinnacle metal hip replacement trials.

Plaintiff Kathy Herlihy-Paoli’s claims of negligence, defective design, failure to warn, and violations of the Montana Consumer Protection Act were rejected by the federal jury, which unanimously ruled in favor of DePuy on all counts in this DePuy metal hip replacement class action lawsuit. The jury’s decision in favor of J&J’s subsidiary came after an eight-week DePuy hip implant product bellwether trial and a day and a half of deliberation.

This was the first of 6,600 DePuy Pinnacle hip implant lawsuits to go before a jury in state or federal court as part of the consolidated multidistrict litigation In re: DePuy Orthopaedics Inc., Pinnacle Implant Products Liability Litigation. The next Pinnacle hip implant bellwether case is set to go to trial in January.

According to mass tort law experts, this early win for J&J in the first Pinnacle hip replacement bellwether case shifts momentum in the larger MDL in the company’s favor. This win contradicts the predicted outcome of this first Pinnacle bellwether trial, as many outside observers and legal experts expected the jury to rule in favor of the plaintiff.

The DePuy Metal-On-Metal Hip Implant Class Action Lawsuit is Herlihy-Paoli v. DePuy Orthopaedics Inc., et al., Case No. 3:12-cv-04975, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Background on Pinnacle Acetabular Cup

DePuy’s orthopedic product the Pinnacle Acetabular Cup hip replacement system has been one of the most popular metal hip implants on the medical device market since its introduction in 2001. DePuy marketed its product as a hip implant providing pain relief and smooth range of motion for damaged and diseased hip joints. DePuy has sold 150,000 Pinnacle hip implant devices since 2001, and 99 percent of these Pinnacle hip replacement components are still in use today.

However, in the midst the of the metal hip implants popularity, reports of injury and product failure began to emerge. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received over 1,300 reports reports of severe hip implant failure and subsequent adverse complication reports concerning DePuy’s metal hip implant. As a result, several civil and class action lawsuits filed against DePuy allege that the company was aware of the high failure rate of its product since 2006. These metal hip implant lawsuits also claim that DePuy was aware of the possibility of patients with a failed Pinnacle hip system developing metallosis, biological toxicity, and other painful side effects.