DePuy Hip Recall Creates Even More Lawsuits

DePuy, who are currently in a legal battle over their ASR hip replacement system, may be facing even more legal issues in the near future – their Pinnacle hip replacement system has been experiencing failures and patients have been enduring side effects, as well. A woman named Catherine Falvey submitted a request on March 25th that these DePuy hip lawsuits be consolidated in the same way the ASR lawsuits are.



The ASR hip replacement lawsuits were approved for consolidation about four months ago by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. The lawsuits will undergo their pretrial process in a single court in Ohio, and from there lawsuits may be sent back to the courts in which they were filed. Since Pinnacle cases are similar, legal experts would not be surprised if the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation approves the consolidation.

Like the DePuy ASR, the Pinnacle hip replacement system is a metal-on-metal ball-in-cup hip replacement system, which some medical experts believe is not a safe concept altogether. The Food and Drug Administration has launched a website to clear up some of the controversies surrounding metal-on-metal hip replacement systems and to outline the pros and cons for prospective hip replacement patients, but the potential dangers have not stopped many similar products from being released on the market.
The Pinnacle case could be a heavy blow to DePuy, since there have been a significant number more Pinnacle hip replacement systems sold than ASR ones. Pinnacles have sold over 150,000 devices, while DePuy ASR hip replacement systems have sold around 93,000 products. All together, this is a serious nightmare for DePuy Orthopedics – they could have thousands of lawsuits from each product on their hands, and millions of dollars in settlements to be responsible for. Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of DePuy, has set aside almost a billion dollars to settle claims related to ASR lawsuits and pay for legal costs in these lawsuits. This amount may have to increase if Pinnacle lawsuits are taken into account.