It was reported last week that Warsaw,
Indiana-based Biomet Inc. agreed to pay at least $56 million to settle claims
in the Indiana MDL over defective metal-on-metal hip implants. Thousands of
plaintiffs have filed suit in the MDL and this agreement would affectively
resolve their claims. The cases were consolidated in October 2012.
The agreement stipulates that each
plaintiff who received a Biomet M2a-38 or M2a-Magnum hip implant that later had
to be revised will receive a base payment of $200,000, though the variations of
each patient’s payment are numerous, dependent on an array of court-approved
conditions.
The agreement may mirror the DePuy ASR
settlement where deductions from base payments are incurred if the claimant
smoked, had the device in for a certain amount of years, and is of a certain
age. The base settlement can increase for multiple surgeries, complications from
revisions, and other factors. The Biomet product was not recalled like the ASR,
even though they are both metal-on-metal models.
Biomet’s settlement deal is in a sense
bifurcated. The corporation will put $50 million into an escrow account to fund
payments to plaintiffs who claim they were damaged by the hip implants. In the
second prong, a common benefit settlement agreement, Biomet will pay $6 million
to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
The deadline to file a claim in order to
be considered for participation in the settlement is April 15, 2014.
The MDL is In re: Biomet M2A Magnum Hip
Implant Products Liability Litigation, case number 3:12-md-02391,
in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
