Johnson & Johnson Defective Hip Bellwether Trials Set for June 2013

In March 2013, a California jury ordered Johnson and Johnson to pay over $8.3 million in damages to a Montana man who sued the company over their now recalled ASR XL Acetabular metal-on-metal hip replacement. The jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay the plaintiff, a retired Montana prison guard named Loren Kransky, $338,000 to cover his medical expenses. The jury also ordered Johnson and Johnson to pay Kransky $8 million to cover Kransky’s life-long pain and emotional suffering.

Traditional artificial hips, which are made of metal and plastic, are expected to last fifteen years or more before needing to be replaced. The normal replacement rate for early unexpected failures is about five percent after five years. However, an internal Johnson & Johnson memo from 2011 estimated that close to 40 percent of patients who received the A.S.R. prosthetic hip will need to undergo painful and costly surgery to have the defective prosthetic replaced with a better model in only five years. If you have this Johnson and Johnson all-metal hip model, your chances of needing replacement within five years are eight times greater than if you had received a better model. Data from orthopedic registries suggests that the Johnson & Johnson A.S.R. prosthetic was significantly more damaging than other all-metal competitors used at the time. This suggests that even compared to other all-metal models, Johnson & Johnson’s model still fell short of the standard.

This California lawsuit was the first in more than 10,000 lawsuits currently pending against Johnson and Johnson over complications and injuries resulting from the metal hips. Federal Judge David A. Katz will preside over a series of upcoming trials in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in June of 2013. The results from these trials will influence Johnson & Johnson’s likelihood of settling future cases & set the bar for the value of future awards and settlements. If you or a loved one was harmed by a defective hip or had to undergo costly and painful replacement surgery, contact Arguello Law Firm today.