Johnson & Johnson seeks new trials after $1B Pinnacle hip implant loss

FEBRUARY 3, 2017 BY BRAD PERRIELLO

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary DePuy Orthopaedics wants a federal judge to grant new trials after it lost a $1 billion judgment to 6 plaintiffs who sued over its metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implant.

A Dallas jury in December found that the metal-on-metal pinnacle hip implants were designed defectively and that the companies failed to appropriately warn patients of the risks associated with the devices, awarding $32 million in compensatory damages and more than $1 billion in punitive damages to the 6 co-plaintiffs. But Judge Ed Kinkeade of the U.S. District Court for Northern Texas, as he did with a similar, $500 million verdict in a previous Pinnacle lawsuit, again slashed the verdict nearly in half. The plaintiffs have appealed that ruling, according to court documents.

Now DePuy wants Kinkeade to grant new, separate trials. Barring that outcome, the company also filed 7 motions for judgment as a matter of law seeking to overturn the verdict.

“Following a trial that was rife with inflammatory and inadmissible evidence concerning matters that were wholly irrelevant to the core liability issues in the 6 plaintiffs’ cases, the jury found for each plaintiff and returned an astronomical verdict of $1.04 billion dollars. Both the damages and liability components of this verdict were the product of unfairly prejudicial evidence that should have been excluded from trial under even the most permissive interpretations of the Federal Rules of Evidence. As set forth below, if the court does not grant defendants’ [judgment as a matter of law] motions, it should strike the damages as excessive and order new trials on all issues for several reasons,” the company argued, according to the documents.

Full Article Source: Johnson & Johnson seeks new trials after $1B Pinnacle hip implant loss – MassDevice