Wright Hip Lawsuit Update

Many product liability and personal injury lawsuits have been filed against the Wright Conserve line of metal on metal hips. In 2015, there was a $11 million jury award in a Wright Conserve hip replacement lawsuit. A Georgia jury awarded Robyn Christiansen $1 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages against Wright Medical Technologies.

Wright Punitive Damages Slashed

Now U.S. District Judge Duffy, has ruled that the negligence verdict will stand, but he has slashed the punitive damages awarded, to $1.1 million. Punitive damages can be awarded in personal injury cases if the defendant acted with gross negligence, malice or wanton disregard for the safety of injured folks.

According to Christiansen, he developed serious problems with his Wright Conserve hip, requiring revision surgery to have it removed.

Several Hundred Wright Conserve Lawsuits

There are several hundred Wright Conserve hip lawsuits pending in the federal court system. Injured plaintiffs allege that Wright knew or should have known that its metal-on-metal hip implant design was unreasonably dangerous and defective, causing metallic debris to be released.

The metal on metal hip design is made of Cobalt, Chromium and Titanium alloy, and the normal movement of the hip joint causes the hip components to grind against each other. This grinding action causes the breakdown of the implant, the release of heavy metals into the blood stream and locally into the joint.

This is known as metallosis, and this serious medical condition can lead to implant loosening, severe infections and ultimately premature failure of the artificial hip. When the hip implant fails the patient is exposed to painful, risky re-do surgery, the increased risk of infections and a painfully prolonged recovery time.

Wright Conserve Hip Multi-district Litigation

Wright Conserve hip implant failure lawsuits in the federal court system have been centralized in the Northern District of Georgia as part of a multi-district litigation (MDL).

Shameful and Tragic Metal Hip Debacle

Wright Conserve hip implant devices are not unique in the significant failure rate and the need for re-do surgeries. Practically all metal on metal hip designs suffer from the same structural mechanical defect. The manufacturers in their rush to get their hip implant product quickly to the market did not perform any safety studies on their devices. They were simply blinded by their insatiable thirst for profit and market share that they valued over patient safety.

They all exploited a loop hole created by the FDA, known as the “510(k)” track. Under the 510(k) regulatory plan, all that hip manufacturers had to show was that their hip implant devices were similar to existing products, which had been approved under a more rigorous pre-market approval process.

They did not need to provide any safety data for their hip implant devices. Their applications were simply rubber stamped by the federal agency which is tasked to providing safety for millions of Americans against dangerous and defective medical devices and drugs. The FDA dropped the ball, as they have in many medical device and driug injury lawsuit cases.

As has been pointed out in many scathing reports, the FDA is in the pocket of Big Pharma. The industrial medical complex tail wags the dog! The FDA is supposed to be impartial and first and foremost safeguard the health and safety of Americans against unscrupulous, rapacious medical and drug manufacturers.

To date there have been several mass recalls of affected metal on metal hip implants.

Similar premature hip failure and metallosis injury claims were filed in 12,000 DePuy ASR hip lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson (J&J). The DePuy line of artificial hips was recalled in August 2010, after many years of strenuous denials of any premature hip failure and metallosis problems by the world’s largest pharmaceutical and medical device maker.

Unfortunately, the delayed recall was too little, too late for the estimated 93,000 injured patients world wide and the 36,000 in the United States. J&J and its subsidiary, DePuy agreed to pay more than $2.4 billion to settle the DePuy ASR litigation.

Worldwide there are still thousands of premature failure and metallosis lawsuits pending. J&J is also exposed to over 9,000 federal Depuy Pinnacle hip lawsuits, centralized in the Northern District of Texas.