Wright Medical Hip Implant Lawsuits

Some lawyers are still accepting individual hip implant cases, but the multidistrict litigation is closed. After losing its first two bellwether test trials, Wright Medical offered to settle its remaining hip implant lawsuits. 

Wright Medical faced roughly 2,000 lawsuits after selling its hip implant manufacturing operations. A federal panel combined 640 of the lawsuits into a multidistrict litigation in Georgia. Others were combined in state courts.

• April 2024: The MDL has already been closed for years, but some lawyers were still evaluating individual cases for potential settlement negotiations or to go to trial.
• December 2023: Profemur brand artificial hip implants have broken apart at the dual modular “neck,” causing patients to suddenly lose their ability to walk or stand, according to a joint investigation by KFF Health and CBS News.
• September 2019: Final settlement payments from Wright were supposed to be sent out.
• July 2019: 73 lawsuits remained in the MDL.
• June 2018: The court ordered the MDL closed.
• October 2017: Wright agreed to settle all remaining hip-implant lawsuits against the company — about 600 cases — for $90 million. No additional lawsuits could be filed in the MDL.
• November 2016: Wright settled more than 1,200 lawsuits for $240 million.

The second settlement in October 2017 covered plaintiffs who had not been allowed into the first settlement. This included people who filed lawsuits after the November 2016 agreement and those who had missed the deadline to file a lawsuit.

The 2017 settlement also applied to dozens of cases that were still pending in a Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding in California state court. No additional lawsuits could be added to the MDL after Oct. 18, 2017. Following the 2017 settlement, the court ordered the MDL closed in June 2018.

Wright’s hip implants were manufactured by the company’s OrthoRecon division. Wright sold OrthoRecon in 2013 but remained legally responsible for lawsuits over its hips. Wright Medical no longer manufactures hip implants.

Wright hips named in lawsuits:

• Conserve Total Hip Implant System
• Conserve Total A-Class Advanced Metal Hip Implant System
• Conserve Resurfacing System
• Profemur System
• Dynasty hip implants
• Lineage hip implants

The majority of lawsuits named Wright’s Conserve and Profemur hip devices. The MDL was limited to only Conserve hips and Profemur System parts related to certain Conserve components.

Studies and reports to federal regulators have found many Wright hip implants failed sooner or more often than expected.

A 2016 review published in The Open Orthopaedics Journal found a high failure rate among patients who received Wright Conserve hips. The study looked at 92 patients who received a Conserve hip between 2005 and 2010. It found that nearly 1 in every 5 patients needed revision surgery to correct problems with the devices. The average time between receiving a Wright hip replacement and requiring corrective surgery was just 4 1/2 years.

In 2015, the company that had purchased Wright Medical’s hip division started receiving a higher-than-expected number of reports of fractures with the Profemur. MicroPort Orthopedics recalled 10,825 of the devices.

The FDA declared the Profemur recall a Class I recall, the agency’s most serious type. The recall notice warned that an acute fracture of the device would require emergency surgery. It also warned that such a fracture in a Profemur hip stem could “lead to neurovascular damage, hematoma, hemorrhage, and even death.

People filed their lawsuits based on the failure of these hips and the complications that occurred as a result.

Two juries returned verdicts totaling $15.5 million against Wright in lawsuits over the company’s hip replacements. The back-to-back losses appear to have motivated the company to offer up $330 million through two settlements to resolve the remaining cases.