In a DePuy ASR hip recall lawsuit, a patient says that the company’s hip replacement device caused injury because of its defective design.

Plaintiff Francis B. and his wife Janet B. claim that Francis was implanted with the DePuy ASR hip replacement in his left hip on or around May 8, 2006, in Austin, Texas. Allegedly, on or around June 21, 2018, Francis experienced a range of physical injury that he claims was caused by a design defect in the DePuy ASR hip that made it not safe or effective as a hip implant.

Francis claims that because of the injuries he suffered, he had the left ASR hip removed during surgery on June 21, 2018 in Round Rock, Texas. He says that he suffered further physical, emotional, and financial injury from the revision surgery that was required to attempt to remedy some of the injury caused by the ASR hip replacement device.

ASR Hip Complaints

This ASR lawsuit is one of numerous complaints launched against the implant’s maker — Johnson & Johnson and its DePuy unit that built the device. They recently have agreed to pay over $120 million in false marketing claims over the device, according to Politico. They have also paid out various settlements to plaintiffs.

Francis claims that he suffered personal injury as a result of the implantation which included “pain, popping, grinding, increased metal levels, adverse reaction to the metal, and significant taper corrosion at the trunnion.”

Francis’ wife, Janet, claimed that she was also affected by the allegedly defective DePuy ASR hip device, saying that Francis’ injuries negatively affected their marriage, causing her loss of consortium.

According to the DePuy ASR hip recall lawsuit, the hip implant is defective because it possesses a metal head that rubs directly on a metal socket, which can cause the device to wear incorrectly. The interaction of metal-on-metal hip device components can also cause metal fragments to fret off from the device and into the patient’s body. 

This occurrence can allegedly cause pain and the surrounding tissue in a patient can become infected because of the metal fragments. According to the DePuy ASR hip recall lawsuit, this can become evident to a patient in a range of symptoms, including pain, redness, and swelling of the area. This exacerbates fit issues as components allegedly cease to fit together properly as the metal fragments wear away, changing how the two fit together.

The shedding of metal fragments into a patient’s body can result in metallosis, where the metal levels in their blood becomes elevated, causing the person further injury, according to the ASR lawsuit.

Voluntary Hip Recall

According to the DePuy ASR hip implant lawsuit, the makers of the device did not conduct enough testing on it before it was released. Allegedly, the device was approved via a “fast track approval process” by the FDA that didn’t require the key elements — the fact that two metal components rubbed directly on one another — to be clinically tested before the device was released onto the market.

In 2010, DePuy announced a voluntary recall of the DePuy ASR hip after patients complained of complications and after data reported that 13 percent of patients who had been implanted with an ASR hip had to have a revision surgery.

Despite the recall, many patients may have been injured by the hip implant prior. As the DePuy ASR hip recall lawsuit claims, many people may continue to deal with injuries and complications from the ASR hip implant.

Francis’s DePuy ASR Hip Implant Lawsuit is Case No. 1:19-dp-20001-JJH, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Western Division.