ClassAction.org is reporting that Johnson & Johnson has agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement to resolve lawsuits brought by patients who allegedly incurred injuries from the company’s metal-on-metal hip implants and were forced to undergo revision surgery.
Plaintiffs across the country have filed lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary DePuy alleging that the company’s
ASR XL metal hip replacement system is defective and can cause serious injuries. In 2010, a multidistrict litigation (MDL) was created to consolidate all federally-filed cases, and according to news reports, more than 10,000 claims were filed in state and federal courts at the time of the settlement announcement. Under the deal, which will not resolve all lawsuits filed over the ASR hips, approximately 8,000 patients who needed revision surgery could receive a base award up to $250,000. The base award may be reduced for certain patients, depending on how long they had the device implanted, their weight, or whether they smoked cigarettes. J&J has also put aside nearly $500 million for supplemental awards, which will be made available to patients who experienced “extraordinary circumstances” after undergoing revision surgery.
The deadline for settlement enrollment is April 1, 2013. Those who had revision surgery on or after August 31, 2013 will not be eligible for the award.
The first bellwether trial in the DePuy ASR MDL was scheduled to begin in September, but the judge overseeing the litigation pushed it back several months due to unresolved issues during discovery. During the last several years, DePuy has faced thousands of lawsuits over its metal-on-metal hips, which patients allege can corrode, fret, or fail prematurely, causing serious problems including metal poisoning. In October, DePuy settled a bellwether case for an undisclosed amount of money in the multicounty litigation (MCL) in California over the ASR implant. In two back-to-back cases tried in state courts, one jury ordered DePuy to pay $8.3 million in damages, while the other sided with the defendant.
An
MDL involving DePuy’s Pinnacle hip implant remains active in federal court and seeks to resolve 4,800 pending lawsuits alleging the Pinnacle hip is also defective and has caused similar problems. Fellow hip implant manufacturers Stryker, Smith & Nephew, and Biomet currently face MDLs involving their hip replacements.
The lawyers working with ClassAction.org are currently reviewing claims on behalf of patients who were implanted with metal-on-metal hip devices. If you underwent arthroplasty and believe you may have been implanted with a metal hip, the attorneys working with our website would like to speak with you. Even if you are unsure as to which device you received, our attorneys can review your claim and, if they believe you may have legal recourse, request your medical records to help determine if you may be eligible for compensation.
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