A judge has recently ruled in favor of the DePuy defendants in a 17-plaintiff hip replacement lawsuit, deciding that the litigation should be decided in a multi district litigation case that has already been assembled in the Northern District of Texas. The plaintiffs claimed injuries from the Pinnacle Acetabular hip replacement system, which they allege is defective, and named DePuy and Thomas Schmalzreid, M.D., co-designer of the Pinnacle hip device, as defendants for their role in creation and distribution of the devices.
This lawsuit is currently in the process of being transferred to the current Pinnacle multi district litigation case, involving a number of hip lawsuits, that is taking place in the Northern District of Texas and is being presided over by Judge James E. Kinkeade. There, it will join a number of other cases alleging DePuy hip implant failure, with side effects that include DePuy hip revision surgery, pain, and difficulty walking associated with the Pinnacle hip replacement device.
The 17-plaintiff lawsuit was originally filed on the 24th of August, 2011, in the San Francisco County Superior Court. DePuy removed the action to federal court on the 22nd of September, alleging diversity of jurisdiction claims; two of the plaintiffs and the defendant Schmalzreid are not diverse, but the defendant alleged that Schmalzreid was fraudulently joined.
On the 27th of September, 2011, DePuy moved to stay all proceedings in the 17-plaintiff lawsuit "pending its likely transfer" to the Texas multi district litigation case. In October the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation issued a Conditional Transfer Order identifying this particular lawsuit as a tag-along action.
The judge's ruling was in favor of the defendants, DePuy Orthopedics and Schmalzreid, but this does not mean disaster for plaintiffs. The move to the multi district litigation case simply means that certain elements of similar trials will be considered as a whole and not in separate parts as they would in separate cases, and would save a significant amount of time and research.
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