DePuy Hip Recall News: Multidistrict Litigation

One of the many steps taken towards resolving the vast number of DePuy hip revision surgery system lawsuits that have been gathering in courts across the country the cases have been combined in federal multidistrict litigation. Multidistrict litigation is a process that combines the pretrial processes in similar cases in order for these processes—which can include research, discovery, and other information that must be uncovered before a trial can begin—to be completed faster, speeding up the entire litigation process. This will help speed up the litigation process, which can often take years especially in personal injury cases, and can help plaintiffs bring home damages more quickly so they can get their lives back on track. After pretrial processes and bellwether trials are completed, the remainder of the trials may be sent back, or remanded, back to the courts from which DePuy Pinnacle Lawsuit originated.

One of the cases that is about to join DePuy multidistrict litigation is that of Michael Schaff, who filed his lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois for  DePuy hip complications.
It was recently transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and the next step will be to consolidate it with the pending multidistrict litigation, which is due to take place in the Northern District of Ohio. Schaff’s case, which is not unlike a number of other DePuy cases, alleges that he experienced serious pain and trauma associated with his DePuy hip replacement system. Like many other patients, he was forced to undergo hip revision surgery to replace the faulty implant.

Hip revision surgery is a second surgery aimed at helping to fix the problems caused by a defective or poorly installed implant. It can come with a number of risks to the patient, putting aside the hefty financial cost. Revision surgery has to work around scar tissue and bone damage from the original surgery and implant, and the risk of complications is much higher than for the original hip replacement surgery. In addition, healing time is much longer and physical therapy can be much longer and much more painful. A large number of DePuy plaintiffs have undergone hip revision surgery.