Parties to a multidistrict litigation over hip implant complications have agreed to expand a Stryker hip implant settlement to include more claimants.

The new agreement modifies a $1 billion settlement agreement originally reached in November 2014, after several individual hip implant lawsuits were consolidated into a single multidistrict litigation in a federal court in Minnesota.

Plaintiffs in these hip implant lawsuit alleged generally that Stryker had failed to adequately warn them about potential complications that could result from being implanted with the company’s Rejuvenate and ABG II hip implant systems.

They claim the implants in question are defective and dangerous.

Patients have reported complications including pain, swelling, poor mobility, dislocations, and looseness of the implant’s parts. Some patients ended up suffering complications severe enough to require revision surgery.

In June 2013, the federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered the consolidation of all federal Stryker hip implant lawsuits into a single multidistrict litigation, in the interest of conducting more consistent and more efficient pretrial procedures.

According to attorneys involved in the Stryker multidistrict litigation, around 20,000 persons have been implanted with the devices at issue.

Stryker recalled the hip implant modular-neck stems in 2012, following reports that some units could corrode or shed metal particles after implantation.

Shedding metal into the surrounding tissue can lead to metallosis, a condition of metal toxicity that can damage or kill the surrounding muscle and bone tissue.

New Stryker Hip Implant Settlement Terms

Under the new terms of the Stryker hip implant settlement, persons eligible for a payment now include those U.S. patients who before Dec. 19, 2016 underwent revision surgery to replace either a Rejuvenate or ABG II modular-neck hip stem.

The previous agreement had limited claimants to those who had received their implants before Nov. 3, 2014.

Claimants can generally expect to receive an award of $300,000 for each hip that had to be revised. The base award may be subject to certain reductions, according to the details of the Stryker hip implant settlement.

Reductions may be taken for certain health-related factors like age, obesity or smoking. Patients not represented by counsel will also receive a reduced payment.

Stryker says most of the payments under the new settlement should be administered by the end of 2017.

Attorneys involved in the case report that the new agreement should lead to improvements in the administration of future settlement payments.

The attorneys say they were able to work out some of the kinks that were present in the original 2014 settlement and learn from those imperfections this time around.

In a statement, Stryker noted that even after the current settlement is fully paid out, other hip implant lawsuits will still remain.

Patients may continue to suffer new complications related to the Rejuvenate and ABG II. The current settlement does not preclude future patients from bringing their own new legal claims as those claims arise.

The Stryker Hip Implant Multidistrict Litigation is In re: Stryker Rejuvenate and ABG II Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2441, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.