New DePuy ASR Hip Implant Lawsuit Filed in MDL
By Andrea Gressman
Janet Warner recently added her name to the list of Plaintiffs to file a lawsuit against Johnson and Johnson after experiencing complications due to the DePuy ASR hip replacement she received. Filed on August 7, 2012, this DePuy lawsuit has been added to the already consolidated proceeding against the metal hip replacement manufacturer. The DePuy ASR MDL is being held in the Cook County, Illinois Circuit Court.
According to Warner’s DePuy hip implant lawsuit, her bloodstream received a high concentration of metal after being implanted with a DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip implant on September 9, 2008. The lawsuit states Warner did not receive a proper warning of the potential side effects prior to receiving the ASR implant – an allegation made in thousands of lawsuits against DePuy, a unit of Johnson & Johnson. The companies have been hit with mounting litigation ever since they recalled the DePuy ASR in 2010 after data showed the metal-on-metal hip implant device prematurely fails, putting patients at risk for a host of complications.
DePuy’s Metal Hip Replacement Problems
Johnson & Johnson subsidiary DePuy faces more than 8,000 pending lawsuits over its defective metal hip implant device called the ASR. The company recently settled three early cases at the low end of the predicted settlement scale, setting a valuable precedent for the other ongoing cases.
The DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip replacement device was used worldwide. Approximately 93,000 were in place in patients around the globe in 2010, including approximately 37,000 in the United States. In 2010, DePuy recalled the ASR, citing complaints over device failures.
Patients with the ASR metal hip replacement system found that they failed prematurely, forcing them to undergo risky revision surgery. Data showed that more than 12% of the devices failed within the first five years of installation. Expected to last at least a decade, if not a lifetime, patients were unpleasantly surprised to find that Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy ASR hip replacement system caused tissue death around the hip joint, increased metal in the blood stream, and even damaged bone near the implant. Patients experienced severe pain, joint dislocations, broken bones, and serious infections as a result of their DePuy ASR hip replacements.
Metal Hip Replacement Lawsuits and Settlements
Individual metal hip replacement lawsuits were filed around the country. More than 6,000 of those cases were ultimately consolidated into a federal MDL (multidistrict litigation) being heard by the Honorable David Katz in Ohio. Separately, DePuy and Johnson & Johnson face another 2,000 DePuy ASR lawsuits in California, Maryland and Nevada.
Legal experts had estimated that settling each DePuy ASR injury lawsuit would cost the company between $200,000 and $500,000 per Plaintiff. The company has already spent around $800 million on the ASR recall, and total settlement bills were expected to be over $2 billion. However, in August 2012, word spread that the company had settled the first three cases for a total of $600,000.
These first DePuy ASR settlements cover three lawsuits that had been bundled together for a December trial in Las Vegas court. All of the Plaintiffs were women who had DePuy ASR hip implants put in within the last six years and later removed due to painful complications that included bone death and life-threatening illnesses. The women were otherwise healthy, and blamed the hip replacements for their later hospitalizations.
By settling the cases before the trial at the low end of the expected scale, Johnson & Johnson is able to signal to other potential Plaintiffs what the actual financial outcomes of the cases may be. This will be valuable to the company in its first official metal hip replacement lawsuit hearings at the state level in Maryland, which are set for January 2013, and its first federal trials, which are scheduled to be held in March or April of 2013.
If you or someone you know was impacted by a DePuy ASR metal hip implant that failed, visit the DePuy ASR Metal-on-Metal Hip Implant Class Action Lawsuit Investigation. Know your rights as a patient. Metal hip implant attorneys are standing by to review your claims, and will make sure that you and your family don’t suffer in silence or face your medical bills alone.
Updated August 27th, 2012
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