A terminally ill plaintiff suing over metal on metal hip replacement complications is trying to get her case heard before she succumbs to cancer.

Plaintiff Deborah A. has asked a federal court in Atlanta to send her case against Wright Medical Technology Inc. back to her home district of Arizona.

Deborah has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she expects she may have only a few months to live. She is concerned that she may die before she gets a chance to testify in her own hip implant lawsuit.

Deborah’s case was transferred to Atlanta as part of an effort to consolidate a large number of hip implant lawsuits against Wright into a single multidistrict litigation, or MDL. The federal court system sometimes consolidates large numbers of similar cases together into an MDL to promote more efficient and consistent pretrial procedures.

Plaintiffs in the MDL generally allege they suffered unacceptable complications after receiving a Wright Conserve hip implant as part of their total hip replacement surgery.

Processing Metal On Metal Hip Replacement Lawsuits

The MDL is following a case schedule laid out in August 2014. The schedule provides that ten selected bellwether cases will complete trial before any others. The first of these trials ended in November 2015 when the jury awarded the plaintiff $11 million against defendant Wright.

The remaining nine other bellwether cases are scheduled to go to trial before Deborah’s does. Deborah argues that since limited discovery has been completed and one bellwether trial is done, there is no reason to keep her case in the MDL.

In opposing Deborah’s request for a transfer, Wright argues that allowing Deborah’s case to go to trial now would severely compromise its ability to defend against her claim.

The company believes Deborah’s trial would be too influenced by the result in the first concluded bellwether trial, which had been chosen for bellwether processing by plaintiffs’ counsel and which resulted in a large award for the plaintiff.

Wright also argues that transferring Deborah’s case would precipitate a flood of similar transfer requests, which if granted could preclude the possibility of reaching a global settlement that resolves all cases together.

Wright suggested in the alternative that the court could allow Deborah to sit for a deposition while she is still alive, preserving her testimony for later.

Deborah originally filed her hip implant lawsuit in 2011. She says she underwent a total hip replacement in 2006, receiving a Conserve Plus hip implant manufactured by defendant Wright. Defects in her metal on metal hip replacement required her to undergo revision surgery in 2009, she alleges.

Simultaneous with its opposition to Deborah’s requested transfer, Wright continues to contest the jury’s award from the first bellwether. At the same time the jury made its award, it submitted a finding that Wright’s metal on metal hip replacement was not defective. The judge ordered the jury to resubmit its form, which then came back with a finding that the device was defective.

The Wright Metal on Metal Hip Replacement MDL is In re: Wright Medical Technology Inc. Conserve Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2329, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.