Last week, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation created MDL 2197, also known as the DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., ASR Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation. The panel’s decision means that pretrial proceedings in lawsuits against DePuy and parent company Johnson & Johnson, will be consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. All currently pending lawsuits over DePuy ASR hip replacement systems and all future federal DePuy Hip injury cases will be transferred to U.S. District Judge David A. Katz in Toledo, Ohio.

Consolidation of the DePuy ASR hip recall cases to be supervised under Judge David A. Katz in Ohio will reduce the need for repeat discovery on similar issues brought up in cases across the country. It will also prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings that could come about with many different judges.

Once pretrial proceedings are complete, the cases not resolved by the Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) process will be sent back for trial in the courts in which they were filed. The individual plaintiffs must still establish their own claims, and damages will be awarded based on the DePuy hip replacement problems that the specific plaintiff experienced.

DePuy ASR Hip Replacement Lawsuits

Experts believe that the amount DePuy will have to pay to settle the DePuy ASR hip replacement suits will well exceed the $1 billion paid by the small Swiss hip and knee replacement company Sulzer AG in 2001. The damages allegedly caused by DePuy’s metal on metal implants are considerably greater than those caused by the Sulzer implants. The Sulzer implants, at worst, required revision surgery; not only have DePuy patients suffered revision surgery, but many have also experienced toxic metal exposure, bone loss around the implant, metal shavings causing necrosis of the surrounding tissue, as well as increased risk of tumors and cancer.

Judge Katz recently supervised mass litigation against Ortho Evra birth-control patches blamed for blood clots, heart attacks and strokes experienced by hundreds of women. Like the DePuy ASR hip replacement implants, the Ortha Evra birth-control patches were also made by Johnson & Johnson.