A Delaware patient claims that she suffered injuries because of her DePuy metal hip implant that allegedly has a defective design.

Plaintiff Susan S. says that she underwent a left total hip arthroplasty at Christiana Care in New Castle County, Delaware, on June 8, 2009. She states that during this surgery, she was implanted with a DePuy Pinnacle Acetabular Cup System with a metal liner. This allegedly led to injuries caused by her DePuy metal on metal hip implant. 

She says that she then had a comparable surgery on May 10, 2010, and had her right hip replaced with a DePuy Pinnacle Acetabular Cup System with a metal liner. She states that after both surgeries, she suffered severe pain and discomfort.

According to Susan, she did not know that this pain was caused by the implants themselves, and resulted from a defect in the design that made it not function as intended, and could cause injury. Susan claims that had she known that the Pinnacle devices caused the symptoms she experienced, she would not have chosen to use the Pinnacle device in her surgeries, and would have chosen to use a different device instead.

Allegedly, she continues to suffer pain and from the device, and will continue to suffer pain as a result of her injury. She says that on Dec. 3, 2018, she had to have revision surgery to remove the Pinnacle devices and replace them with different hip replacement systems.

Susan states that in addition to the physical, financial, and economic injury that her use of the devices themselves cost her, she also suffered physical, financial, and economic damages from the revision surgery, claiming that the revision surgery was “followed by monitoring, rehabilitative and pharmaceutical costs, and lost wages and loss of future earning capacity.”

The DePuy metal on metal hip implant lawsuit notes that the Pinnacle Device involved two parts — the liner and the acetabular cup, stating that DePuy and Johnson & Johnson, the device’s makers, “developed, designed, tested, manufactured, and distributed at least four different metal acetabular cups and three different liners to be used as the Pinnacle Device.”

The acetabular cup is designed to fit with a metal ball, which attaches to the femur of a patient.

In the information on hip implants for the public, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration explains that the cup’s liner can either be made of the same or a different material than the material of which the ball is made. The FDA states that the four combinations are generally as follows:

• “Metal-on-Polyethylene: The ball is made of metal and the socket is made of plastic (polyethylene) or has a plastic lining.
• Ceramic-on-Polyethylene: The ball is made of ceramic and the socket is made of plastic (polyethylene) or has a plastic lining.
• Ceramic-on-Ceramic: The ball is made of ceramic and the socket has a ceramic lining.
• Ceramic-on-Metal: The ball is made of ceramic and the socket has a metal lining.”

In Susan’s case, she was allegedly fitted with a DePuy metal on metal hip device, meaning a Pinnacle device with a metal lining was used with a metal ball.

Susan says that having two metal devices rub on one another caused metal fragments to fret off from the contacting metal devices and spread into the surrounding bloodstream and tissue in her body, causing infection and injury, requiring revision.

Susan argues that DePuy and Johnson knew that a DePuy metal on metal hip implant had the capacity to cause injury, but let it onto the market via a fast-track FDA approval process that enabled the companies to skirt pre-market testing.

Unfortunately, Susan is far from the only patient who is claiming injury like this. Bloomberg reports that Johnson & Johnson has begun reaching settlements with customers who claim that the Pinnacle hip caused them injury.

The DePuy Pinnacle Hip Lawsuit is Case No. 3:18-cv-03417-K, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.