The
DePuy ASR hip implant, approved by the FDA in 2005 and recalled in August, 2010 has had over 6,000 lawsuits filed against DePuy and parent company Johnson & Johnson. For states which operate under a two-year statute of limitations, that SOL ran this past August, yet there are still instances under which a knowledgeable attorney may be able to get a person harmed by the ASR into the litigation against DePuy. Even so, as of November, 2012, it is largely believed that the majority of ASR cases are on file.
No cases have been settled within the multidistrict litigation, however in separate trial cases three were settled in Las Vegas. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $600,000 to resolve the three cases filed in Nevada state court. These three trials had been set for December 3, 2012. Each of the three Nevada plaintiffs claimed they were forced to undergo expensive and painful revision surgery in order to have an
ASR hip implant—which suffered early failure—removed.
By December, 2010, following the August recall, the ASR recall litigation had been consolidated before U.S. District Judge, David A. Katz for pretrial proceedings. This type of consolidation allows parties to avoid duplicating discovery or receiving inconsistent pretrial rulings from courts across the U.S. It is believed that MDL consolidation makes the litigation process much more efficient and allows the cases to move along in a timely fashion.
Eight depositions were noticed in Federal court this past August regarding the currently pending ASR cases slated to be heard before an Ohio U.S. District Court. The President of DePuy Orthotics during the ASR recall—David Floyd—was slated to be deposed as well as the current President of DePuy, Andrew Ekdahl who took over in June of 2011 when Floyd resigned. A February, 2012 New York Times investigation made it known that Floyd received notification that the FDA refused to approve one version of the ASR as the device did not meet approval standards due to its excessively high early failure rates. Although the company was aware of grave ASR hip replacement damages by August of 2009, it did not act immediately on this knowledge. Other company executives are also expected to testify regarding the ASR defects.
The next trial date is scheduled for January, 2013 in a Maryland state court with the first federal DePuy ASR trials set for May, 2013. It is reported that at the end of last December, Johnson & Johnson set aside between two and three billion dollars for litigating the ASR cases and it is believed they will do the same at the end of this December. The legal community has a general feeling that DePuy and Johnson & Johnson will start settling or trying dockets during the first two quarters of 2013.
Although the SOL has run in many states, an experienced law firm
may still have ways to file those cases, and people who have not yet filed a lawsuit should contact a knowledgeable attorney for further information and a comprehensive evaluation of their potential case. Once cases begin to settle it will be extremely difficult to
find an attorney willing to litigate a case against Johnson & Johnson due to the cost; when thousands of cases are consolidated the expenses can be shared; however those who wait, or find they have problems later could be barred forever from recovery.