Pinnacle Hip MDL: 5 Things to Know

By Michael Phelan | March 18, 2016

This is part two of a two part question and answer piece about the DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip implant system.  Part one focused on the recent $502 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson and its unit, DePuy Orthopaedics.  This part focuses on the multidistrict litigation (MDL) involving the Pinnacle Hip Implant litigation.  We first wrote about the Pinnacle hip implant MDL in 2012.

1. What is Multidistrict Litigation (MDL)?

Congress created by statute the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.  The Panel is appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States.  “MDL” means a multidistrict litigation docket which the Panel which the Panel is considering or has created by transferring cases to a transferee district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings.  Fed. R. Civ. Pro. of JPML, Rule 1.1.

2. Is there an MDL for Pinnacle Hip Implants?

Yes.  The  Pinnacle hip implant litigation MDL is called –  In re DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. Pinnacle Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation, case number 3:11-md-02244, pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.  The MDL judge is Ed Kinkeade of Dallas.  In the summer of 2015, the MDL Court selected six “bellwether” cases to be prepared for trial.  See, e.g.,  8/26/15  Second Amended Order on Bellweather Trials in Thibodeau, et al. v. Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc., et al.  Five of these cases were eventually consolidated and tried for two months in Dallas, resulting in $502 million Pinnacle hip implant verdict for the plaintiffs.  The defendants won the first bellwether trial in 2014 over the same device – the Pinnacle ULTRAMET Metal-on-Metal.

3.  Is the Pinnacle Hip Implant MDL a class action?

No.  The purpose of the MDL is to coordinate or consolidate all pending federal court cases involving the subject Pinnacle hip implants for pretrial proceedings, including discovery.  MDL courts typically see their roles as also including the coordination of a global settlement of all pending claims.  However, at the end of coordinated discovery period, if there has been no global settlement, the individual cases would be transferred back to their home district courts for trial.

4.  Does the fact that there is an MDL mean that the Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip implants have been recalled?

No.  DePuy metal-on-metal hip implants have not been recalled, but the companies have stopped selling them.  About 170,000 of the Pinnacle hip implant devices were implanted. In 2013, J&J announced a $2.5 billion settlement of thousands of lawsuits involving its DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip implants.  The ASR had been recalled and was also the subject of an MDL.  The 2011 DePuy hip recall involving the ASR covered 93,000 implants worldwide.

5. What is the status of the Pinnacle Hip Implant MDL?

The recent verdict was just the second bellwether trial.  There are about 8,000 lawsuits filed against J&J and DePuy over their PInnacle metal-on-metal hip implant devices.  None of these Pinnacle devices was covered by the $2.5 billion DePuy ASR settlement, but plaintiffs hope that the recent bellwether verdict will prompt a global settlement of the Pinnacle cases.  We suspect that there will need to be more bellwether trials before a settlement is reached.  The winning argument in the last trial was that, knowing its Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip devices had similar problems as the ASR model, DePuy nonetheless launched an aggressive campaign to market the Pinnacle devices, including paying kickbacks and bribes overseas, paying doctors millions to promote the devices, and misleading doctors and patients about he safety of the hips.  The alleged incentive for this deception was that DePuy thought it could rack up billions in sales of metal-on-metal hips, but could no longer promote the ASR.

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Posted in Defective Product, Product Liability