$400 Million Settlement Reported in Johnson & Johnson Hip Lawsuits

Bloomberg reported that Johnson & Johnson is willing to pay more than $400 million to settle thousands of claims that the company sold defective artificial hips and hid the dangers of the devices from consumers.

In a December 9 court filing, a judge said that Johnson & Johnson has settled or is in the process of settling about 3,300 of the 10,000 lawsuits that have been filed against it regarding adverse events associated with its Pinnacle line of hip-replacement devices.

Sources who were familiar with the settlement, but spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that J&J executives have agreed to pay an average of $125,000 per case to resolve about one third of the Pinnacle suits that are currently pending against the company for a total payout of about $413 million.

The sources also said that J&J is seeking to resolve the remaining Pinnacle cases before a trial is scheduled to begin in Dallas on January 14, 2019.

These are the first settlements in this seven-year litigation over Johnson & Johnson’s Pinnacle hip implants, which plaintiffs say failed prematurely or gave them metal poisoning. Over the past two years, juries have awarded at least $1.7 billion in damages in cases related to Pinnacle hip implants.

In August, a Texas judge awarded $246.1 million for plaintiffs in the bellwether case after a jury ruled in their favor, finding J&J liable for the defects and fraud. The six plaintiffs in the case claimed that after implantation, the devices led to injuries including tissue death, bone erosion, and other negative health effects. The plaintiffs also claimed that J&J falsely promoted the device with claims that the implants would last longer than those that were made of plastic or ceramic.

In December 2016, a federal jury in Dallas awarded J&J and DePuy Orthopedics to pay more than $1 billion to six plaintiffs who claimed to be injured by its Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip implants.