Injury Lawyer Blog
This week in Dallas a jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $247 million to six patients that were negatively affected by the company’s Pinnacle artificial hips. The awarded amount broke down as $79 million in actual damages and $168 million in punitive damages. The patients that brought the claims all had to have their Pinnacle artificial hips surgically removed as a result of a defect. All six patients are residents of New York.
The New York patients that brought this claim included: Uriel Brazel, who is an 88-year-old physician; Karen Kirschner, a 67-year-old elementary school teacher; Ramon Alicea, a 61-year-old chauffeur; Hazel Miura, a 60-year-old housing official; Eugene Stevens, a 53-year-old health-care aide; and Michael Stevens, a 52-year-old financial analyst.
The Depuy unit is the manufacturer of this type of hip replacement for Johnson & Johnson. The jury ruled that Depuy knew that the Pinnacle artificial hip devices were defective and that the metal hip implants were defectively designed, but Depuy failed to properly warn medical professionals and patients about the risk of the device failing prematurely.
Overall, this jury order brings the third large loss in litigation regarding the Pinnacle artificial hip device for Johnson & Johnson and DePuy. The number of total lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson and Depuy is currently more than 9,700 in both state and federal courts throughout United States. That number has grown over 13 percent since last year.
The central focus of the claims against Johnson & Johnson and Depuy arise from from the their false promotion of the metal-on-metal device. The companies’ false promotions stated that their metal hip implants lasted longer than similar implants made or ceramic or plastic materials.
In August of 2010, Johnson & Johnson recalled over 93,000 of the Pinnacle artificial hip devices worldwide after it found that 12 percent of the devices failed within the first five years after the procedure. In 2013, Depuy stopped sales of the Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip replacement devices because at that time the United States Food and Drug Administration heightened their regulations regarding artificial hip devices.
In March of 2016, a jury ordered Johnson & Johnson and Depuy to pay five Texas residents negatively affected by their products $500 million (later reduced to $150 million).
In March of 2017, Johnson & Johnson and Depuy were again ordered by the jury to pay six California residents $1 billion (later reduced to $543 million).
If you or a loved one has experienced negative or unwanted outcomes due to defective metal on metal hip replacement devices please contact the Naumes Law Group for a free consultation at 844-826-8445 or online at www.naumeslaw.com.