Judges Allow DePuy Plaintiffs to Sue in State Court
Patients in Florida who are suing over their defective DePuy hip-replacement implants may have legal options other than the Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) that thousands of cases have joined.
In January, a federal judge ruled that two Florida women can keep their ASR hip recall cases in Florida State Court instead of in U.S. Federal Court.
A press release reports the attorneys for the women “argued that DePuy’s Florida based distributor, Bayside Orthopaedics, should be held liable. According to the judge’s order, ‘it is undisputed that Bayside received commissions from DePuy for the marketing and sales of the product in question. Entities that play an active role in promoting a particular product within the chain of distribution to the general public are strictly liable for any defect in the product.’ “
Lawyers call this a victory for victims because slow-moving MDLs can work in favor of defendants like DePuy, which is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.
The first the U. S. lawsuit against DePuy Orthopaedics was filed on June 15, 2010. The suit claims that the DePuy ASR hip replacement was defectively designed and that the company was aware of the problems and did nothing to safeguard consumers. More than 3,500 lawsuits have since been filed in the U.S. and they have been consolidated for pretrial proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio as part of a MDL.
However, at least two U.S. district judges have allowed four other plaintiffs – three in Nevada and one in Wisconsin – to keep their cases out of the 
slow-moving MDL.
The most recent MDL status conference was held January 23, 2012, at the U.S. District courthouse in West Palm Beach, Fl. It was reported that DePuy and Johnson & Johnson have produced approximately 18 million pages of documents that are being reviewed by the Plaintiff’s Discovery Committee. Depositions of employees have been taken. The next status conference is scheduled for March 15, 2012.
DePuy recalled 93,000 ASR metal hip implants in August 2010 after researchers found 13 percent of patients would need a second corrective surgery within five years. The devices included in the recall are the ASR XL Acetabular System, a socket used in total hip replacement surgeries, and the ASR Hip Resurfacing System, a partial hip replacement used to preserve the bone. Together, the devices created excessive friction, releasing metal fragments into patients’ blood. The ASR metal hip implants were used between 2005 and mid-2010.
