DePuy Pinnacle Hip Lawyers Appointed to Leadership Positions in MDL

U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade, who is presiding over all federal DePuy Pinnacle hip implant lawsuits, has appointed a number of lawyers to serve in various leadership roles in the multidistrict litigation (MDL), which has already grown to include more than 800 claims. 

These attorneys will perform certain actions during the coordinated pretrial litigation that will benefit all plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit over problems with DePuy Pinnacle metal hip implants.

In May 2011, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered that all complaints filed in federal district courts throughout the country involving DePuy Pinnacle hip implants be transferred to Judge Kinkeade in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas as part of an MDL.

All of the suits involve similar allegations that the DePuy Pinnacle Acetabular Cup System was defectively designed or manufactured, and that inadequate warnings were provided about the risk of early complications or problems, which often develop within a few years of the surgery. In many cases, the DePuy Pinnacle hip replacement complications result in the need for additional surgery to replace or revise the hip replacement.

In a case management order issued on January 9, Judge Kinkeade assigned Larry P. Boyd as plaintiffs’ lead counsel, Richard J. Arsenault, Jayne Conroy, W. Mark Lanier and Kenneth M. Seeger to the plaintiffs’ executive committee, and 17 attorneys to the plaintiffs’ steering committee (PSC).

The number of DePuy Pinnacle lawsuits has grown rapidly since the MDL was formed. As of January 5, there were 833 cases that had been transferred to the MDL.

In addition to defending the lawsuits over DePuy Pinnacle hip implants, Johnson & Johnson and DePuy also face thousands of lawsuits over the recalled DePuy ASR hip replacement, which was pulled from the market in August 2010 due to a higher-than-expected failure rate.

The DePuy ASR hip was approved as a substantial equivalent design to the DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip. According to allegations raised in several complaints, a DePuy Pinnacle hip recall should also be issued due to the similar design problems.

Over the past two years, concerns about all metal-on-metal hip replacements have been growing.

In October 2010, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) issued a warning about potential problems with metal on-metal hip replacements, indicating that patients and the medical community should be aware that pain months after hip replacement surgery may be a sign of metal-on-metal hip cobalt toxicity.

Last year, the FDA launched a new website to provide information about the risks associated with metal-on-metal hip replacements.