DePuy Hip Lawsuits Could Cost At Least $1 Billion Dollars
A writer for Forbes predicts DePuy Orthopaedics will end up paying an average of $169,000 for each claim it faces after the company recalled 93,000 metal on metal hip implants in August 2010. DePuy hip lawsuits are expected to cost Johnson and Johnson, at least $1 billion dollars.
DePuy, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, recalled the devices after researchers found 13 percent of patients would need a second corrective surgery within five years because friction between the devices contaminates the surrounding tissue and the bloodstream with microscopic metal fragments. The ASR implants were used between 2005 and mid-2010.
The Forbes writer, Peter Cohan, based his prediction on the results of a $1 billion settlement paid by Sulzer Orthopedics in 2001. The average individual settlement was $147,000, which Cohan adjusted for inflation to $169,000. In total, Cohen thinks the lawsuits filed against DePuy and other metal hip manufacturers will cost about $5 billion.
Johnson & Johnson set aside nearly $1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010 for costs related to the recall and potential settlements.
The first lawsuit in the United States against DePuy 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 United States and they have been consolidated for pretrial proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL).
However, at least two U.S. district judges have allowed four plaintiffs to keep their cases out of the slow-moving MDL. DePuy sought to keep the three patients in Nevada and one in Wisconsin in the MDL, where the company believes it will do better in court.
DePuy has offered to pay “reasonable and customary” expenses related to testing and treatment, including revision surgeries to remove and replace the ASR systems, but experts say this a the company’s attempt to fix the problem on the cheap. Patients report being left with thousands of dollars in medical expenses DePuy won’t cover, and attorneys assert such patients have a right to recover a financial settlement for what they’ve been through.
Furthermore, patients who accept DePuy’s financial assistance must allow the company full access to their medical records and health history, giving up privacy rights protected by the courts. DePuy is even offering doctors an incentive payment of $50 for each set of completed medical release forms it returns. Of course, DePuy is neither informing patients they are giving up rights nor disclosing the potential payments to doctors who encourage them to take DePuy’s offer.
