Patients around the country could soon see resolution to their hip implant claims.
A $2.5 billion settlement has been reached in a massive lawsuit against ASR hip implant manufacturer DePuy that could impact thousands of plaintiffs around the country, including some that have been in contact with Tucson personal injury lawyers about the status of this case.
The case involved over 80 million pages of documents and the work of attorneys who crisscrossed the globe to take depositions in England, Ireland, California, Indiana, New Jersey, and other states from coast to coast.
The DePuy ASR hip replacement device involves a flawed design of a metal ball that rotates in a metal cup mimicking the hip joint ball and socket movement. When implanted, the prosthesis with all metal surfaces causes grinding friction and metal shards to break off into the patients’ bloodstream. Aside from the undue pain, the defective device and toxic metal debris can cause neurological disorders, bone erosion and development of tumors.
This settlement was meant to address the need to resolve thousands of individual cases in state courts around the country against DePuy and its parent company Johnson & Johnson as well as addressing a large multi-district litigation in federal court. It is the product of encouragement by the federal court to develop a settlement oversight committee.
The settlement is meant to also provide some resolution for plaintiffs.
“In a relatively timely basis, we can recover this compensation for their pain and injuries so they don’t have to wait for litigation to float through the court system for years and years,” said Peter Flowers of the Meyers and Flowers Law Firm, which spearheaded the effort on the behalf of plaintiffs.
