I have written about artificial hip litigation on this site more than any other area of product liability law, and for a very good reason: there is a lot to write about. Metal-on-metal hips have gravely injured tens of thousands of people, and new victims are undergoing revision surgeries each…
Stryker Orthopaedics has announced that it reached a national settlement in the multidistrict litigation focused on the Stryker LFIT V40 femoral head. The LFIT V40 femoral head is one component of Stryker’s artificial hip system. This settlement announcement is a bit surprising, as the MDL was created for the LFIT…
If you have any interest in artificial hips, you need to follow the work of Dr. Steven Tower. An orthopedic surgeon in Anchorage Alaska, Dr. Tower has built a one-man research laboratory studying the horrifying health effects of chrome and cobalt hip components. While hip manufacturers have been slow to…
As we get older, our bodies weaken, bones become sore, and joints break down. Hip and knee problems are common conditions of aging. In fact, in the past decade millions of Americans have had hip replacement surgeries. Unfortunately, some defective artificial hips have caused patients more suffering than their original…
Have you ever had a problem with a medical device? If you want to bring state law claims against the manufacturer or a doctor, there’s an important legal concept you should know about: federal preemption. In a recent case, the court dismissed several of the plaintiff’s claims against Smith &…
As we saw in the previous post, the “Birmingham plaintiffs” submitted a 160-page Master Complaint in August 2017, alleging many Smith & Nephew misrepresentations that led to the introduction of an unreasonably dangerous product into the marketplace. In this post we continue our deep dive into the Smith & Nephew…
This is the story about the Smith & Nephew Birmingham Hip Resurfacing Device, the patients harmed by the metal-on-metal artificial hip, the lawsuits that followed, and the massive Master Complaint filed last August against Smith & Nephew. But First, How Do We Get to a “Master Complaint”? This is how…
In the last three DePuy Pinnacle artificial hip bellwether trials, three juries awarded the following amounts of money: $502,000,000.00, $1,041,311,648.17, and $247,000,000.00. That’s a total of $1.79 billion dollars. The juries awarded plaintiffs compensatory damages (or actual damages) and punitive damages (to “punish” the defendant companies). Remember that these juries settled…
On November 16, 2017, yet another Texas jury delivered a huge verdict to the victims of the DePuy Pinnacle artificial hip. In this fourth bellwether trial, the jury awarded $247,000,000.00 to six plaintiffs and their spouses. According to news reports, after a two-month, hard-fought trial, the jury found that DePuy Orthopaedics and…
A former client wrote a review of my work helping him through his metal-on-metal artificial hip case. I am very grateful for the review and would like to share it: I had one shot to even the score. I trusted Clay Hodges with my life. Mr. Hodges and his paralegal…