Hip Replacement Lawsuits

Since 2002, hip manufacturers have paid more than $7.5 billion to settle thousands of hip lawsuits. Recent jury verdicts against manufacturers have totaled more than $1.7 billion. But courts have tossed out or reduced many of those.

While most lawsuits involving metal-on-metal hip implants have been resolved, more than 14,500 hip cases were still pending across the country as of December 2018.

Lawsuits over Stryker’s LFIT V40 femoral head and Smith & Nephew’s BHR and R3 hips have only recently been consolidated in federal and state courts. Meanwhile trials over DePuy’s Pinnacle hips are still underway, with some verdicts on appeal.

Most large hip replacement actions involve metal-on-metal designs. They were supposed to be more durable, but lawsuits claim the devices shed microscopic amounts of chromium, cobalt or other metals into the body.

According to complaints, the design flaw caused a condition called metallosis, which destroys bone, muscle and other tissue. In addition to creating immediate health problems for the patient, the condition can weaken an implant and cause it to fail.

Lawsuits say several other complications occurred as a result.

Metal-on-metal implants became popular throughout the 2000s but quickly fell out of favor as reports of complications mounted. This led to hip replacement recalls, lawsuits and FDA actions. In 2016, the FDA strengthened the approval process for metal-on-metal hips.

Not all metal-on-metal hip models with high complication or failure rates were recalled. Manufacturers simply removed some of them from the market. DePuy’s Pinnacle hip was never recalled. But the largest jury verdicts in hip lawsuits have involved Pinnacle hips.

Six companies dominated the metal-on-metal hip implant market and have been involved in the largest lawsuits. Zimmer acquired Biomet for $13.3 billion in 2015. The merger gave Zimmer Biomet a major share of the $45 billion musculoskeletal implant industry. Wright Medical no longer makes hip implants. This leaves four companies with the lion’s share of this market in the U.S.

DePuy has settled thousands of lawsuits over its ASR Hip Replacements. But it faces more than 9,000 more lawsuits over its Pinnacle device. The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation combined the federal lawsuits in two separate litigations, known as MDLs. Settlements and jury verdicts in DePuy hip lawsuits total more than $6 billion.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation grouped the first Smith & Nephew lawsuits into a single litigation in 2017. The cases are still in the early stages.

Stryker hip lawsuits targeted three of the company’s products. Lawsuits over the Rejuvenate and ABG II hips were transferred to the same court. Those cases settled in 2014. More recently, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation created a single litigation, or MDL, for cases involving Stryker’s LFIT V40 hip component. Stryker agreed to an initial settlement in those cases in November 2018.

In March 2016, Zimmer offered to settle lawsuits over its Durom Cup for $314 million. In May of that year, a court ordered that everyone with a case in the multidistrict litigation had to participate in the settlement process. In November 2018, a federal panel combined 21 new lawsuits over other components into an MDL in New York. The new lawsuits involved models of the company’s M/L Taper Hip Prosthesis used with Zimmer’s Versys Femoral Head.

A settlement in more than 2,800 Biomet hip lawsuits came as the company merged with Zimmer in 2015. Zimmer absorbed some of the costs of settling the lawsuits, which had been combined in a multidistrict litigation.

Some of the problems that led to Wright’s hip lawsuits didn’t show up until after the company sold its hip manufacturing division. In addition to metallosis-related complaints, people also sued over the devices loosening.