North Carolina Product Liability Lawyer Blog

Articles Posted in Your Settlement Funds

Paying Your Bills While Your Product Liability Case Is Litigated

Published on: March 15, 2016 | By Clay Hodges

I get it. When you get injured, you almost immediately begin to worry about money. It is completely rational. If my client is a car salesperson and has severe pain after standing for more than an hour, he may worry that his failed artificial hip surgery could cause him to lose his job. If another client is a graphic designer, and a car crash results in a broken arm, the client may wonder how she will do her graphic design work at a computer or work space. Beyond concerns about handling job duties, there will be immediate financial pressures. I wrote about handling medical bills in a product liability case here. But there are of course other bills to be paid: mortgage payments or rent, food, utilities, and other expenses of living. It can seem overwhelming.

Try to Get Through This Difficult Period Without Obtaining Loans

I know, I know, easy for me to say. And frankly you are right. No one ever wakes up and says, “today is a great day for me to enter into a ruinous loan I will never be able to pay back.” I understand that most people attempt to exhaust every other funding source before looking for third-party funding during a desperate financial period. But I am going to say it anyway: exhaust every other funding source before looking for third-party funding. Call your parents, your kids, your friends, anyone who might help you get through the difficult financial period you face when waiting for a product liability or other personal injury case to resolve.

Paying Medical Bills As Part of Your Product Liability Case

Published on: March 9, 2016 | By Clay Hodges

“How am I supposed to pay all these medical bills?”

This is usually one of the first questions I get from people injured by a failed medical device. Typically a failed device like a hip or knee causes all kinds of health problems for a person. Often a revision surgery is necessary, and sometimes several surgeries. All this extra medical care is expensive. It also requires large amounts of time to rehabilitate and recover, which causes substantial time away from work. Some of my clients lose their jobs, or are forced to quit because they can no longer do the work. Meanwhile, the bills from surgeons and hospitals continue to pile up.

Medical Providers Expect Payment

First, no matter who is at fault for your failed medical device or harmful drug, the doctors and hospitals who provide you treatment will expect prompt payment of their bills. After surgeries, these bills often come fast and furiously. If you have health insurance you will need to arrange with the physician and/or the hospital ahead of time to file a claim for payment. But even if you have health insurance you will most likely be responsible for payment of a significant portion of the costs of your medical care (through co-pays, deductibles, and/or percentages of the medical bill not covered by health insurance). The surgeon or hospital will expect you to pay these amounts promptly.

So what can you do?

Depuy ASR Artificial Hip “Part B” Settlement for Future Injuries

Published on: March 4, 2016 | By Clay Hodges

Over the past several weeks we have reviewed the Depuy ASR Settlement Agreement, and recently the Part B extraordinary injury money awards that are available to qualified injured people. You can read about the Part B “Extraordinary Injury Fund” (“EIF”) here, and about Part B “Miscellaneous Injuries” here.

In this post I want to talk about the “Future Matrix,” which is a section in both settlement agreements that provides a pathway for individuals to pursue additional compensation when a problem arises after the original settlement has been signed and initial payments have been made. It can be a very useful option for recovering additional money if a serious health problem arises after the initial settlement has been paid and resolved. Let’s jump in.

Depuy ASR Hip: “Part B” Payments for Lost Earnings, Young Age, Etc.

Published on: February 23, 2016 | By Clay Hodges

In previous articles we looked at the Depuy ASR Settlement Agreement compensation framework. We examined the Part A base award here, and looked at the Part B “Extraordinary Injury Fund” (“EIF”) here. Just to recap, if you received a Depuy ASR hip in a hip replacement surgery, and it later “failed,” causing you to need revision surgery, you likely qualified for participation in the Depuy ASR settlement program.

The Part A award was one monetary award based on having to undergo hip revision surgery. The default Part A amount was $250,000.00, and this figure could be reduced by certain factors, such as smoking, obesity, advanced age, and length of time between original surgery and revision.

The Part B awards were built around “extraordinary injury,” and included compensation to people suffering from less common bad results, such as heart attack, stroke, foot drop, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, dislocation, or infection.

In this post I want to drill down a bit on one of the vague areas of potential compensation in the Part B “matrix.” The Depuy Settlement Agreement designates an area for compensation for miscellaneous injury, which is referred to as Matrix Level VII (Discretionary). Let’s look at a few examples:

Depuy ASR Hip Settlement Part B “Extraordinary Injury Fund”

Published on: September 25, 2015 | By Clay Hodges

Part 3

There are two key areas of compensation under the Depuy ASR Hip Settlement Agreement: The Part A Base Award, which we talked about in the last post, and the Part B Award, which awards additional compensation under Depuy’s “Extraordinary Injury Fund” (“EIF”). Let’s get to those “extraordinary injuries.”

Bilateral Implants

Depuy ASR Hip Settlement Agreements: The Part A “Base” Award

Published on: September 21, 2015 | By Clay Hodges

Part 2

In Part 1 we talked about the process for determining if you would be eligible to participate in the Depuy ASR Hip Settlement. I remind you that although the deadlines for participation in the first two Depuy ASR settlements have passed, people are still filing lawsuits against Depuy Orthopaedics and Johnson & Johnson. More settlement agreements will likely be reached in the future, because many people who have been injured by the metal-on-metal Depuy ASR hip have not been compensated for their injuries. When those new settlement agreements are established, they will likely look much like the first two agreements. So it’s helpful to review those settlement terms.

OK, so picking up where we left off in Part 1: Let’s say you are a patient in the United States and that the Depuy ASR artificial hip system was implanted in your body. It failed. You then had a “revision” surgery to remove the failed hip components. Thus, you would be “eligible” to participate in the settlement. You then hired a lawyer who filed suit in federal court in your state, then properly transferred the case to the MDL in Ohio. From that point, your attorney would then submit all documentation relating to the MDL and its “Case Management Orders.” To participate in the settlement, you and your attorney would need to submit all enrollment forms, claim forms, and other required submissions.

Depuy ASR Hip Settlement Agreements: What It Means For You

Published on: September 14, 2015 | By Clay Hodges

Part 1

After years of litigation and negotiation among the plaintiffs and defendants, the first Depuy ASR hip settlement agreement was reached on November 19, 2013. This settlement document, with all the exhibits, was 181 pages long. The first settlement agreement required that you must have undergone revision surgery on or before August 31, 2013. A second settlement agreement was reached on March 2, 2015, which allowed participation in the settlement if you received a revision surgery after August 31, 2013 but no later than January 31, 2015. The key terms in the second settlement agreement are the same as those in the first settlement. The agreements take a long time read through, digest, and understand. In this post and those that follow, I am going to help you work through the settlement language.

Please note: The deadlines for participation in both Depuy settlement agreements have passed. At the moment there are no settlement agreements in place in which you may enroll or participate now or in the immediate future. However, there should be new settlement agreements down the road for those of you who undergo a revision surgery after January 31, 2015. Further, you still have options if you had a revision surgery before January 31, 2015 but simply missed the deadlines for enrollment (which I discuss below). I will keep you posted if and when a third settlement agreement is reached.

“Medical Funding” Serious Threat to Your Product Liability Settlement

Published on: September 8, 2015 | By Clay Hodges

I received a court filing from the Depuy ASR multidistrict litigation last week, and it reminded me to caution you about the serious financial threat you can face when dealing with artificial hip failures and hip litigation (and of course, other medical device failures like artificial knees and transvaginal mesh). Sadly, this threat comes from third-party companies that appear legitimate, even helpful, but mainly have a naked profit motive for getting involved in your case. These companies often cash in unfairly from all the suffering you endured from you failed artificial hip or failed medical device.

What is Medical Funding?

Think of it as a lawsuit loan, or a loan against your future settlement recovery. Medical Funding is a medical care financial assistance “service,” and occurs when a third-party company offers to pay the medical bills of a person who is injured by the negligence of others. This could be a car crash case, a failed medical device like a hip, or any other situation where the negligence of someone else caused the injury. If you accept the offer, the company will pay the medical care provider—the surgeon, the hospital, etc.—a percentage of the provider’s billed charges, but usually more than the provider would have been paid by private health insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid. The company then receives an “assignment” from the medical provider that allows the company (potentially) to receive the full amount of the billed charges, which are often much higher than what the company paid for the medical care and higher than what private insurance would have paid. The third-party company will then file a medical expense “lien” on the proceeds of the person’s settlement or jury award.

Depuy Hip Settlement: Do You Opt-In or Seek a Jury Trial?

Published on: September 1, 2015 | By Clay Hodges

In this post, we will look at the decisions a person must make when faced with a master settlement offer like the recent one in the Depuy ASR hip litigation. Of course, the deadlines have passed in the two settlement agreements involving the Depuy ASR hip systems, but the analysis below remains important, and of course there are still people out there who have suffered failed artificial hips.

Part 1

First things first: your medical decisions

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★★★★★

I was involved in a case for the faulty hip replacements. Clay Hodges represented me. I can't say enough about how much he has helped me. Clay was able to win multiple settlements on my behalf with most of them being the maximum amount able to be awarded. Matt J.

Clay, thank you sir for making a disheartening experience at least palatable, you and your staff were honest, caring and understanding through the entire process of my wife’s hip replacements, while monetary settlements never make the pain and suffering end, it sometimes is the only way people can fight back to right a wrong. J. V.

We are absolutely pleased with how Clay Hodges handled my husband’s hip replacement claim. He always kept us informed of the progress. And, his work resulted in a settlement which we are extremely pleased. Thank you, Clay! Carol L. & Norm L.