The first three Depuy hip implant lawsuits have been settled by Depuy’s parent company Johnson & Johnson for an estimated total of approximately $600,000, or $200,000 per case, an amount one pharmaceutical industry expert says is on the lower end of the price range the company should expect to pay to the recipients of the Depuy metal-on-metal hip implant. According to a University of Michigan business professor, each lawsuit — of which there are approximately 8,000 – could cost Johnson & Johnson between $200,000 and $500,000, for a total cost as high as $2 billion.
These three cases, filed in Las Vegas, Nevada, were settled before their trial dates, scheduled in the next few months. The three claimants in these cases allegedly had to have their Depuy ASR metal-on-metal hip implants removed due to painful side effects and health complications, according to official court documents. In one case, doctors reported the patient suffered bone damage as a result of the implants. Hip revision surgery, required to remove a failed implant, is much more dangerous, with a significantly lower success rate than the initial implant surgery.
In 2010, Johnson & Johnson issued an international recall for approximately 93,000 Depuy ASR metal-on-metal hip implants due to their early than average failure rate. According to the company, the recall cost Johnson & Johnson approximately $800 million. About 37,000 of these hip implants, said to have failed at a rate greater than 12 percent within their first five years of use, were installed in patients throughout the United States. The average early failure rate for hip implants is approximately 5 percent. More than 8,000 lawsuits filed in state and federal courts allege the hip implants caused infections, broken bones and immobilizing joint dislocations.
These artificial hip joints allegedly shed fragments of heavy metals such as chromium alloy and cobalt into the tissue surrounding the implants and even into the bloodstream, causing metal ion levels to dangerous extremes.
Approximately 6,000 federal lawsuits concerning the Depuy hip implant have been consolidated under U.S. District Judge David Katz in Toledo, Ohio for pretrial evidence gathering, and more than 2,000 other lawsuits have been filed in states including Nevada, Maryland, and California. The first federal trials are scheduled to begin in March or April of 2013, while a lawsuit involving three implant patients in the state of Maryland will have a January court date barring an early settlement.
Johnson & Johnson argues that, despite the recall, the hip implants have caused no long term medical problems to their recipients.
