New DePuy ASR Hip Implant Lawsuit Filed by Ohio Man

New DePuy ASR Hip Implant Lawsuit Filed by Ohio Man

By Andrea Gressman

Another DePuy ASR Hip Replacement lawsuit has been filed, this time by an Ohio man who claims he must undergo revision surgery to replace the defective device. The Plaintiff, who has not been identified, claims that as the result of his November 2007 DePuy ASR hip implant surgery, he has experienced continual pain and suffering. However, the situation becomes even more complicated because the Plaintiff claims he will now have to undergo an additional revision surgery that will present a significant degree of risk for him in order to have the hip implant device removed and replaced with a new one.

DePuy ASR Hip Replacement Lawsuit Background

More than 6,000 DePuy ASR hip implant lawsuits are underway across the country accusing Johnson & Johnson subsidiary DePuy of manufacturing and marketing a defective device. The DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip implant has been targeted due to unusually high failure rates following implantation. These failures have caused pain, additional injury, and complications leading to severe health impairments for many patients.

Due to the device’s high failure rate, Johnson & Johnson recalled many of the hip implants in  August  2010. Since then, thousands of hip implant lawsuits have been filed. Individual liability lawsuits were consolidated into multidistrict litigation (MDL), which is being held in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, but there are also state-by-state proceedings being held around the country. As of January 2012, Johnson & Johnson indicated the company had spent around $800 million on the DePuy ASR recall and related court costs.

DePuy ASR Lawsuit Settlements

Plaintiffs involved in the DePuy ASR lawsuit MDL received good news this month with the announcement that the company will settle three cases in advance of the official trial. The three cases settled for approximately $600,000, which was on the low end of analysts’ estimates of settlement costs. These DePuy ASR settlements represent an important step forward in the resolution of all the cases, as it sets a financial precedent for the many cases still to be decided in the later MDL proceedings.

The DePuy ASR settlements represent three cases which were to have been heard in December 2012 in the Clark County District Court in Las Vegas. The settlements were awarded to three Plaintiffs, all of them women who had ASR metal hip replacements installed and then removed when complications arose. The women — Annelise Rundle, Martha Bender and Katherine Guy — opted for an early cash settlement of approximately $200,000 each rather than waiting for the outcome of their scheduled hearing.

The amounts in the early DePuy lawsuit settlements are noteworthy because analysts had expected cases to be settled for between $200,000 and $500,000 each. By settling early cases at the lower end of the financial scale, DePuy and Johnson & Johnson are seeking to contain the total costs of the recall settlements, which have been estimated to potentially amount to more than $2 billion. The total amount may grow well beyond that if additional cases are added to the more than 6,000 DePuy ASR lawsuits currently on the dockets.

Settling these three cases also serves to delay the start of formal proceedings. The cases had been set for December 2012, the earliest of the scheduled metal hip replacement lawsuit hearings. Now, the next cases scheduled to be heard at the state level will take place in Maryland in January 2013. The federal DePuy MDL hearings will take place beginning in May 2013.

If you or someone you love had a metal hip replacement that was later recalled or required follow up revision surgery, reach out now. Visit the DePuy, Biomet, Wright Medical & Other Metal-on-Metal Hip Implant Class Action Lawsuit Investigation to receive more information. Find out your rights as a patient and what you can do to join state or federal metal hip replacement lawsuit settlements.