A Californian judge has upheld the DePuy hip replacement settlement of $8.3 million awarded by a Los Angeles jury to Loren Kransky and denied the company their request for a new trial.
Loren Kransky (65) from South Dakota was awarded the DePuy hip replacement settlement after a hearing at the Los Angeles Superior Court in March this year, in which the jury had found DePuy Orthopaedics negligent for supplying the plaintiff with a faulty ASR XL Acetabular hip replacement system and awarded the former prison office $8.3 million compensation for a faulty hip implant.
DePuy Orthopaedics´ parent company – Johnson & Johnson – appealed the decision and requested that a new trial be held on the grounds that “the court did not let the company tell the jury about the Food & Drug Administration’s review and clearance of the device”. However, Judge J. Stephen Czuleger upheld the jury´s verdict and said that the plaintiff had provided enough evidence during the original trial to establish that the products were defective in design.
The judge´s decision to deny DePuy Orthopaedics a re-trial has prompted Johnson and Johnson to delay the Multi District Litigation (MDL) being heard in Ohio, by filing a motion requesting that any DePuy hip replacement settlements awarded in the case are based on typical injury compensation awards in the company´s home state of Indiana – where compensation settlements are much lower than the national average.
Johnson and Johnson are also preparing to defend a second MDL in Texas; where more than 4,000 claims brought by plaintiffs complaining of defects in DePuy´s Pinnacle hip replacement system have been brought together in one action. The first of the DePuy Pinnacle hip replacement compensation claims is scheduled to be heard in September 2014.The company recently announced that it would discontinue manufacturing and selling the allegedly faulty Pinnacle hip replacement system from August this year.