Information and commentary provided by Dallas Fort Worth DePuy Hip Injury Attorney Dr Shezad Malik. The Dr Shezad Malik Law Firm can be contacted in Dallas at 214-390-3189. If you or a loved one has been injured from a defective DePuy Hip, please fill out our contact card for a free consultation regarding your defective product liability claim. Click here for Map and location.
A judicial panel has decided that all pretrial proceedings in federal lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson over recalled hip-replacement devices will be overseen by the Federal Court in Ohio. Once pretrial proceedings are completed, the individual cases are sent back for trial in the courts where they were first filed.
U.S. District Judge Katz in Toledo, Ohio, will supervise evidence-gathering efforts in cases over the ASR XL Acetabular System.
DePuy recalled both the ASR XL Acetabular System, a total hip-replacement product approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration in August 2005, and the DePuy ASR Hip Resurfacing System.
New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J, and Warsaw, Indiana-based DePuy said they recalled the devices after researchers found many patients needed “revision surgery” after five years because of design defects.
Researchers in the U.K. found that, 13 percent of patients with complete hip replacements and 12 percent with resurfacing devices needed a second operation.
Other medical-device makers have faced costly product-liability cases in the past over hip-replacement systems.
Sulzer AG agreed in 2001 to a $1 billion settlement of suits alleging hip and knee implants made by its former Sulzer Medica unit were defective.
In the DePuy litigation, there are allegations of toxic exposure to trace elements, chromium and cobalt. A DePuy victim’s damages include revision surgery to get the metal-on-metal implant out, systemic reaction to the excessive metal load in their body, bone loss around the implant, metal debris and metal ions in their tissues causing necrosis of the tissue, chromium and cobalt poisoning, non-malignant tumors, and increased risk of cancer.
Serious allegations indeed.