CHICAGO – The second of about 10,000 lawsuits against DePuy Orthopedics ended Tuesday with the jury finding in favor of the Johnson and Johnson unit, published reports indicate. The Illinois jury rejected claims that DePuy inappropriately marketed an artificial hip which was recalled three years ago, the subject of around 10,000 pending lawsuits. A Los Angeles jury in March had found against the company, awarding $8.3 million to a Montana man. The L.A. jury awarded compensatory but not punitive damages, having found that the hip device was defectively designed but rejecting the plaintiff’s claim that DePuy failed to adequately warn of the risks associated with it. DePuy voluntarily recalled in August 2010 the all-metal Articular Surface Replacement device, which was introduced internationally in 2003 and in America in 2005. Worldwide, 93,000 implants were sold, according to company reports. The company says it made the recall after reviewing new information from the National Joint Registry of England and Wales, which indicated that 13 percent of patients were undergoing a second hip replacement, or revision surgery, sooner than expected. “We regret that the ASR hip product did not meet the needs and expectations of some patients and, as a result, our own expectations,” Pam Plouhar, worldwide vice president for clinical research at DePuy, said in a statement March 25. “We firmly believe that DePuy acted properly and responsibly with the information it had.”
