More than 900 federal DePuy Pinnacle hip replacement lawsuits have been filed and have been included in the multidistrict litigation, or “MDL”, In re: DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. Pinnacle Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation (MDL No. 2244). On February 1, 2012, a Master Cast List was entered by the court, detailing the case numbers, filing dates, and transferor districts of the DePuy hip replacement lawsuits currently pending before Judge James E. Kinkeade in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. These cases were centralized for MDL on May 23, 2011.
Judge Kinkeade recently appointed plaintiffs’ counsel to serve on various leadership committees. In addition to assigning leadership rules, Judge Kinkeade appointed James M. Stanton as Special Master to help the court with pre-trial, trial and post-trial tasks. Now that DePuy hip replacement lawyers involved in the litigation have been assigned leadership roles and a Special Master named, discovery and motion practice can move forward. The initial discovery process will likely involve the identification and noticing of certain witnesses for depositions.
Growing at a rate of roughly 100 lawsuits per month, the Pinnacle hip litigation has steadily picked up steam since its inception nearly nine months ago. The growth of the DePuy Pinnacle MDL might be due to Johnson & Johnson’s recall of another one of its hip implant products. In August 2010, Johnson & Johnson issued a worldwide recall of its ASR metal-on-metal hip implants due to their excessively high failure rates. The recall was prompted by a study from the National Joint Registry of England and Wales, which concluded that 1 out of every 8 patients who received the devices had to undergo revision surgery within five years.
The growth of the Pinnacle MDL may also be attributed to greater consumer awareness of the dangers of metal-on-metal hip replacements, which have been widely reported by the media in recent months. The New York Times in December 2011 described problems with all-metal hips—originally intended to be more durable than implants made from metal and plastic components—as “the most widespread medical implant failure in decades.”
Artificial hips are intended to last at least fifteen years, but some all-metal versions fail as early as a few years after implantation. The high failure rate is widely attributed to the release of metal particles into a patient’s body, which results from friction between the ball and socket portions of metal hips. Some recipients are reporting symptoms of Pinnacle metal toxicity.
Although the metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip replacement devices at issue in the Pinnacle MDL lawsuits were not subject to the hip replacement recall 2010, plaintiffs allege that they share similar design defects to the ASR hip devices.
Pittman, Dutton & Hellums is actively filing cases on behalf of individuals allegedly injured by both types of artificial metal-on-metal hip implants- ASR and Pinnacle models. If you would like a free case evaluation, please contact Booth Samuels toll free at 1-866-515-8880 or at booths@pittmandutton.com.
