J&J’s Pinnacle Hips Face First Trial on Poisoned Patients

By Jef Feeley  Sep 3, 2014 3:19 AM GMT+1000 Facebook

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), which set aside $2.5 billion last year to resolve claims that 8,000 of its artificial hips were defective, faces a new round of lawsuits over another line of hip implants blamed for poisoning patients.

J&J’s DePuy unit is starting its first trial of allegations that the metal-on-metal version of the Pinnacle hip was defectively designed and caused metal debris to leech into patients’ bloodstreams. The cobalt-and-chromium material caused an infection that forced Kathleen Herlihy-Paoli to have her artificial hips surgically removed, she said in court filings.

Jury selection began today in Herlihy-Paoli’s suit, the first of more than 6,000 cases over the devices to be weighed by a jury. The cases have been consolidated before U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade in Dallas for pretrial information exchanges. Kinkeade will preside over Herlihy-Paoli’s trial.

“The first trials in any of these consolidated litigations set the tone for the following cases,” Carl Tobias, who teaches product-liability law at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said in an interview. “If J&J loses the first couple of these Pinnacle trials, they better start seriously thinking about coming up with a settlement similar to what they signed off on for the ASR hips.”

Full Report from Bloomberg here: J&J’s Pinnacle Hips Face First Trial on Poisoned Patients – Bloomberg.