A $400 million DePuy hip settlement has been proposed by Johnson & Johnson to settle thousands of claims regarding allegedly defective implants.

The proposed settlement will resolve around 3,300 of the 10,000 lawsuits regarding the DePuy Pinnacle hip replacement. Under the DePuy hip settlement, each case will receive a payout of around $125,000.

Rather than implementing a global settlement to resolve claims, Johnson & Johnson is using the DePuy hip settlement to resolve claims handled by individual lawyers.

The DePuy Pinnacle hip implant preceded the DePuy ASR hip implant and was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000.

Plaintiffs in DePuy Pinnacle lawsuits claim that the hip replacement implant is defective and results in complications, which was hidden by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary DePuy. Symptoms allegedly associated with failure of the hip replacement include joint pain, inflammation, and limping. The Pinnacle hip replacement implants were taken off the market in 2013 due to reports of complications and high implant failure rates allegedly caused by defects.

While Johnson & Johnson prepares to settle thousands of lawsuits, they are also preparing to face a trial in Texas. The trial regards a lawsuit brought by five patients who were implanted with the Pinnacle hip replacement and allegedly experienced side effects due to defects with the implants. Plaintiffs argue that Johnson & Johnson failed to test the hip implant sufficiently and mislead both doctors and patients about the safety and efficacy of the Pinnacle hip replacement implant.

The company has denied these claims. Johnson & Johnson argues that they developed their Pinnacle hip replacement responsibly and marketed the implant appropriately.

In 2011, lawsuits regarding the Pinnacle hip replacement were consolidated into multidistrict litigation before U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade in Texas federal court. This allowed for the exchange of information and test trials. The recent DePuy hip settlement is resolving thousands of lawsuits which were filed as part of the multidistrict litigation.

The first case which went to trial in the multidistrict litigation resulted in a win for Johnson & Johnson, but the next two were wins for the plaintiffs. In fact, the third trial ended in a $1 billion verdict.

The court has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay over $1.7 billion in verdicts to compensate patients for damages. However, several of the verdicts have been thrown out through the appeal process or reduced by trial judges. The shocking $1 billion verdict awarded to six plaintiffs was reduced almost by half.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is currently determining whether to uphold the $1 billion verdict, which may be motivating the DePuy hip settlement. University of Georgia professor Elizabeth Burch said Johnson & Johnson may be aiming to avoid losing the appeal. “The value of these cases goes up if a verdict is upheld,” Burch said, according to Bloomberg.

The DePuy Hip Settlement Pinnacle MDL is In Re DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. Pinnacle Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation, Case No. 11-md-2244, in the U.S District Court for the Northern District of Texas.