A South Carolina woman has filed a metal on metal hip replacement lawsuit over complications associated with the Pinnacle hip implant system.

Plaintiff Juniece I. says she underwent implantation of a Pinnacle Acetabular Cup System during hip replacement surgery in October 2001.

Years later in November 2014, she underwent revision surgery. After her surgeries she began experiencing hip implant complications like “pain, discomfort, difficulty ambulating, and metallosis.”

Juniece believes these complications happened because the Pinnacle system is a defective product that is not reasonably safe for its intended purpose. These alleged defects lead to a high rate of complications and hip replacement failure, she says.

She notes that manufacturer DePuy Orthopaedics and its parent company Johnson & Johnson did not recall the Pinnacle system even after receiving over 1,300 adverse event reports about the Pinnacle.

Despite receiving these reports, Juniece says, both DePuy and J&J failed to properly warn patients and the medical community about the dangers of complications and hip replacement failure associated with the Pinnacle system. She says that she would not have chosen to use a Pinnacle hip implant had she been better apprised of the risks of hip implant complications.

The DePuy Pinnacle MDL

Juniece filed her hip implant lawsuit as part of a multidistrict litigation going on in a Texas federal court. In total, over 8,000 other plaintiffs have filed hip implant lawsuits claiming harm that resulted from the Pinnacle system.

Cases brought through the MDL procedure give the plaintiffs certain advantages. When thousands of individual plaintiffs bring claims that have only the same allegedly defective product in common, the manufacturer has a much more difficult time arguing that the problems were due to factors other than some defect in the product.

Juniece notes that if the DePuy MDL were not going on in Texas, she would have filed her hip implant lawsuit in a South Carolina federal court. She anticipates her claim will be transferred back to South Carolina for trial, after pretrial proceedings are completed.

The Pinnacle MDL is pending under MDL no. 2244 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Juniece’s own hip implant lawsuit is filed under case no. 3:16-CV-00153.

Problems With Metal on Metal Hip Implants

The plaintiffs in the Pinnacle MDL make allegations similar to those raised by the recipients of many other metal on metal hip implants. Many say they were assured that these types of implants would let them be more active and would last longer than other types of hip implants that use plastic, polyethylene, or ceramic components.

But the plaintiffs’ actual experiences were much different, they say. Many allege they had to undergo revision surgery to resolve hip replacement failure after only a few years of use.

Plaintiffs say metal on metal hip implants tend to shed particles of cobalt and chromium into the surrounding tissue. This shedding leads to metallosis, a condition that can damage and kill the surrounding bone and other tissue.

Patients with metallosis around their hip implant tend to experience pain, instability, and sometimes spontaneous dislocation or fracture. The body may also react by forming pockets of fluid known as pseudotumors.