DePuy Parent Company to Pay $4B Settlement, Bloomberg Reports
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Staff Report-
Johnson & Johnson will pay more than $4 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits over recalled DePuy hip implants, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. The business journal cited three people familiar with the case in reporting that the settlement will resolve more than 7,500 state and federal lawsuits against DePuy by patients who claim their orthopedic implants were defective. Johnson & Johnson will pay an average of at least $300,000 per hip surgery, and the agreement does not bar patients whose artificial hips fail in the future from seeking compensation, Bloomberg quotes the three sources as saying. The settlement is expected to be announced next week in federal court in Toledo, Ohio. The journal notes this would be the second major settlement this month for Johnson & Johnson, which said Nov. 4 it will pay $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil probes into how it marketed medicines such as Risperdal. A DePuy spokeswoman declined to comment on the accord to Bloomberg, which quotes another spokeswoman saying earlier this year that Johnson & Johnson has spent about $993 million on medical costs and informing patients and surgeons about the recall. The company set aside an undisclosed amount for litigation, which it increased before June 30, according to the spokeswoman.
