A fund that manages health benefits for 25 towns in northern New Jersey filed a class action lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary DePuy Orthopaedics over its massive ASR hip implant recall.
In a civil suit filed in U.S. District Court for New Jersey late last week, the North Jersey Municipal Employee Benefits Fund accused J&J of fraud and unjust enrichment, alleging that the New Brunswick, NJ.-based medical conglomerate knew of problems with the implant but left it on the U.S. market anyway.
The fund wants the court order JNJ to cover any of its members who may have been affected by the recall under the state’s consumer fraud act, as well as allowing the defendants to recoup damages from the company’s “wrongful profits, revenues and benefits to the extent, and in the amount, deemed appropriate by the Court,” according to the complaint.
DePuy Orthopaedics announced in August 2010 that it was voluntarily recalling its ASR hip replacement system after receiving reports that a higher-than-normal number of patients required surgeries to correct or remove defective implants. The company said it was pulling the ASR XL Acetabular and ASR Hip Resurfacing systems from the market “due to the number of patients who required a second hip replacement procedure, called a revision surgery.”
Lawsuits over the ASR implant have piled up across the country, accusing DePuy of manufacturing a defective product, failing to warn patients and doctors of problems with the implant and negligence in designing, manufacturing and selling the product. DePuy, which introduced the ASR in the U.S. in 2005 after winning 510(k) clearance from the Food & Drug Administration, allegedly knew of design problems with the cup but failed to adequately warn physicians, according to the lawsuits.
DePuy discontinued the cup and had phased it out by March of this year, sending a letter to doctors that month warning that data from the Australian medical device registry showed a “higher-than-expected” failure rate in traditional hip replacements, especially in smaller patients or those with weak bones.