According to a report in the Wall Street Journal last week, approximately 1,000 DePuy hip replacement lawsuits have already been filed. These lawsuits have been filed in state and federal courts against Johnson & Johnson alleging that there are defective components causing the hip replacement failures. As a Weston Medical Malpractice Lawyer, it seems logical to reason that even more lawsuits will be filed against Johnson & Johnson, assuming that additional hip replacements continue to fail. The Wall Street Journal reports that Johnson & Johnson added $570 million to its liability fund last year in anticipation of these DePuy hip replacement lawsuits.
However, some estimates in the Wall Street Journal article have the total cost of the lawsuits for Johnson & Johnson at over $1 billion. From the perspective of a Weston Injury Lawyer, part of what could cause Johnson & Johnson to be found liable is the widespread assumption that it knew about the problems with the product and anticipated that many would fail. As many people know, in August of last year, 90,000 DePuy ASR XL Acetabular Systems and DePuy ASR Hip Resurfacing Systems were recalled.
The manufacturer acknowledged the findings that 12% to 13% of the hip replacements would fail within five years. Readers of this blog will remember a post on a DePuy hip replacement failure report, which purported that ultimately nearly half of the hip replacements would fail within six years. From the perspective of a Weston Medical Malpractice Attorney, I will be very interested in seeing how these cases progress, and to what degree Johnson & Johnson is ultimately found liable. As with many other high dollar volume lawsuits, I expect this issue to stay in the news for quite some time.
The Schulman Law Group is a personal injury law firm located in Weston, FL that is committed to representing personal injury victims, including victims of Weston, FL medical malpractice. Please visit our website at www.schulaw.com. For a free consultation, please call us at (877) LAW-0444 or email us.
