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LAWSUITS NEWS & LEGAL INFORMATION

Wright Medical to pay $340M to end Hip Implant Failure Lawsuits


This is a settlement for the Hip & Knee Replacement lawsuit.

Los Angeles, CA: Wright Medical Technologies has announced it will pay $340 million to end about 2000 claims resulting from alleged failure of its hip implant devices. This settlement will augment the Wright defective hip implant settlement reached in 2016 by $90 million, according to the defendant’s legal counsel.

The lawsuits are consolidated in multidistrict product liability litigation (MDL) in the Northern District of Georgia or in Los Angeles Superior Court in judicial counsel coordinated proceedings, California's equivalent to a federal MDL.

The first bellwether case was heard in 2015 and resulted in an $11 million jury verdict for Robyn Christiansen, a 73-year-old Salt Lake City ski instructor who had suffered a catastrophic failure of her Wright-manufactured hip implant. The award was eventually reduced by $9 million.

According to the terms reported for the 2016 settlements, each claimant with a Conserve Cup device received about $170,000. Each claimant implanted with either a Dynasty or Lineage replacement hip that had failed received $120,000.

The Wright hip implant metal-on-metal design was responsible for the device failures, because it caused metal wear, according to court records. This resulted in the shedding of metallic debris into the surrounding tissue, leading to a condition known as metallosis, which inflamed and poisoned tissue, dissolved bone that anchored the implant and ultimately caused the implant to fail, court records state.

According to attorneys for the plaintiffs, this new settlement agreement will include hundreds of cases excluded in the first agreement because Wright Technology, the medical device company's new Chinese owners, and Wright's insurance carrier did not have sufficient funds to cover all the claims.

The new cases include those with hip implants that failed after the statute of limitations on suing had expired, cases filed after the original settlement was consummated, and suits by plaintiffs who reconsidered after initially deciding not to accept a settlement offer last year, the attorneys said.

Those plaintiffs who refuse to settle as part of the $340 million agreement, will be dismissed and remanded to their states of origin, according to the attorneys.

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Published on Oct-11-17


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