News Johnson & Johnson Must Pay in First Hip-Implant Case

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Johnson & Johnson Must Pay in First Hip-Implant Case
Mar 8th 2013, 18:13

A jury in Los Angeles on Friday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $8.3 million in damages in the first lawsuit to go to court against the company in connection with a now-recalled all-metal artificial hip implant.

But the 12-person panel declined to issue punitive damages against the company's DePuy orthopedic division, saying it did not act with fraud or malice in its marketing of the device.

Johnson & Johnson faces some 10,000 lawsuits from patients who received the implant, which was known as the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R.

The A.S.R., which the company recalled in mid-2010, has one of the highest early failure rates of any orthopedic device sold in recent years.

An internal Johnson & Johnson document introduced at the Los Angeles trial estimated that some 40 percent of patients who received the device will need to undergo a second operation to have it removed and replaced within five years.

Artificial hips are expected to last 15 years or more before replacement; the normal early replacement rate is about 5 percent after five years.

Other documents disclosed at the Los Angeles trial indicated that Johnson & Johnson executives were told by orthopedic surgeons who were paid consultants to the device maker that the design of A.S.R. was flawed. In some cases, those experts also urged the device maker to consider slowing sales of the implant.

Johnson & Johnson executives have insisted throughout the A.S.R episode that they acted responsibly and moved to recall the device when data from an orthopedic registry in Britain showed that its earlier failure rate was higher than normal.

On Friday, the company said in a statement that it viewed the verdict as "mixed" and that it planned to appeal the damage award.

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