Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) agreed to settle a bellwether case in a group of lawsuits consolidated in a California state court days before it was slated to go before a jury.
Johnson & Johnson pulled the DePuy ASR device from the market in 2010, prompting thousands of personal injury and product liability lawsuits across the country.
In 1 of them, filed in the San Francisco Superior Court, Robert Eugene Ottman alleged that DePuy knew that the device was defective but put it on the market anyway. Ottman underwent revision surgery to replace his DePuy ASR XL implant in November 2011 after its acetabular cup "detached, disconnected, created metallic debris, and/or loosened from patient’s acetabulum," according to court documents.
"On or before August 2008, the date of plaintiff’s hip replacement surgery, defendants knew or should have known that the ASR system was failing and causing serious complications after implantation in many patients," according to the documents.
A jury trial in the Ottman case was scheduled to begin Oct. 15. Johnson & Johnson agreed to a conditional settlement in the case for an undisclosed amount, according to the documents, with a final agreement slated to be reached before Dec. 1.
The 1st trial over the DePuy ASR implant settled in August 2012 before it could go to trial. In March, a jury awarded another plaintiff, Loren Kransky, $8.3 million after deciding that the device was defectively designed (California Judge J. Stephen Czuleger rejected DePuy’s request for a new trial in May). In April, an Illinois state jury found for DePuy in Carol Strum vs. DePuy Orthopaedics & Premier Orthopaedic Sales.
And plaintiffs in 7 lawsuits filed over the DePuy ASR device can add claims concerning the DePuy Pinnacle implant, a state judge in California ruled.
The August 2010 recall of the DePuy ASR devices was "due to the number of patients who required a second hip replacement procedure," according to a company report. An internal review in 2011 found that 37% of DePuy’s ASR hip implants would require revision or replacement in less than 4.6 years.
In July, the judge in the Ohio MDL ruled on a number of pre-trial motions from both sides, granting DePuy’s bid to keep evidence about the recall out of the trial. The judge has twice delayed a bellwether trial in that litigation to allow more time for discovery.
