Plaintiffs Mary K. and Stephen K. have filed a product liability lawsuit against Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc. and others, alleging the company had sold a defective Durom Acetabular Component, or Zimmer Durom Cup, used in hip replacement surgery.

The plaintiffs allege product liability “as it relates to the design, development, manufacture, testing, marketing, promotion, distribution and sale of Zimmer’s defective hip implant component known as the Durom Acetabular Component, “the Zimmer Durom cup lawsuit states.

According to the plaintiffs, Mary was implanted with the defective hip in June 2007. She alleges that she later required revision surgery in June 2015, because she was implanted with a defective Zimmer Durom cup.

She had also been implanted with a Zimmer Durom cup in her right hip in July of 2007, which also later required revision surgery in October 2014.

According to the Zimmer Durom cup lawsuit, “these multiple surgeries caused plaintiff … to suffer significant injuries, including great pain and agony that restricted her ability to engage in the physical activities she enjoys.”

Specific Failures of the Zimmer Durom Cup

The Zimmer Durom cup is an orthopedic device that is used in hip arthroplasty, “a surgical procedure in which the patient’s hip joint is resurfaced and replaced with an artificial implant.”

According to the Zimmer Durom cup lawsuit, the device is designed to connect to the hip bone of the patient. It is intended to have the patient’s own bone “grow into the exterior shell of the cup.”

The Zimmer lawsuit states that the “bone in-growth into the porous shell is what is intended to hold the cup in place.” What occurs however, according to the plaintiffs, is that “the Durom cup implant resists bone growth and as a result, instead of adhering to the bone, it comes loose and/or pops free from the hip, which can cause damage to the pelvic bone.”

The lawsuit continues to explain that “this unintended result causes extreme and devastating pain and necessitates revision surgery to remove the failed Durom Cup and replace it with a product that functions properly.”

The specific issue, moreover, with the Durom Cup is that it is part of a metal-on-metal hip implant system. This is partly the cause of what plaintiff Mary K. suffered from, the lawsuit explains. It was marketed as being more durable, but according to the plaintiffs it was only more likely to fail.

According to a New York Times article from  March 2010, “studies in recent years indicate that in some cases the devices can quickly begin to wear, generating high volumes of metallic debris that is absorbed into a patient’s body. That situation can touch off inflammatory reactions that cause pain in the groin, death of tissue in the hip joint and loss of surrounding tissue.”

The lawsuit alleges that Zimmer failed to adequately test sample devices on a frequent and continuing basis and failed to correct and decrease further failures of the Durom Cup.

The Zimmer Durom Cup lawsuit is Case No. 2:17-cv-03681-SDW-SCM in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.