Bloomberg New reports that Johnson and Johnson which is fighting more than 10,000 lawsuits over its recalled hip implants, is negotiating a potential settlement with patients that may eventually total more than $2 billion, according to five people familiar with the matter. The world’s biggest seller of health-care products, offered to pay more than $200,000 a case, according to the people, a deal which could exceed $2 billion if most plaintiffs accept the terms. Lawyers for hip recipients have so far rejected the offer as too low, the people said.
In 2010, J and J recalled 93,000 all-metal hips worldwide, including 37,000 in the U.S., saying more than 12 percent failed within five years. Patients who sued contend they suffer pain and are immobilized by joint dislocations, infections and bone fractures. They alleged metal debris from the hips causes tissue death around the joints. The settlement talks probably won’t end until after the first trials of the lawsuits begin, starting next week, with more set for next month and May, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about the talks.
J and J faced 10,100 suits over the hips through September. Most pretrial collection of evidence has been consolidated in federal court in Toledo, Ohio, where 7,240 cases are pending, and California state court in San Francisco, where more than 2,000 cases are filed. Other cases have been filed in state courts around the U.S. The three cases going to trial in the next few months may offer lawyers guidance on potential liability and damages. The first proceeding starts Jan. 23 in state court in Los Angeles; the second begins next month in state court in Chicago; and a third is slated for May in federal court in Toledo, Ohio.
The Los Angeles court trial involves a lawsuit by Loren Kransky of Montana, a retired corrections officer who got an ASR hip implanted on Dec. 5, 2007. He had the hip replaced in February 2012. Claims by Kransky, 65, include failure to warn, negligent recall and manufacturing defect. “Kransky asserts that his device released metal ions into his body and that as a result he developed elevated chromium and cobalt levels,” J and J said in a Nov. 21 court filing. The instructions with the implant “specifically warned that metal ions may be released from the hip implant into the body and that additional surgery may be required.”
A retiree and a military veteran, Kransky’s health conditions included “diabetes, neuropathy, arteriosclerosis and heart problems, some of which were determined to be associated with his exposure to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam in the 1970s,” according to the filing.
Kransky’s case was chosen from those pending in the California Judicial Council Coordinated Proceeding before Judge Richard Kramer in San Francisco.
“Any comment relating to settlement that does not come from leadership, the court, or from the company itself, is speculative and uninformed,” said Skikos, of Skikos Crawford Skikos and Joseph in San Francisco and Cleveland.