The Depuy Recall

On August 24,2010 a volunteer hip replacement recall was issued by Depuy Orthopedics, a division of Johnson and Johnson. The ASR XL Acetabular metal-on-metal hip replacement system has shown to have a 13% failure rate within the first 5 years.

Curiously, the FDA had given special clearance to Dupuy to make the hip replacement system available to the public without first performing any clinical trials back in 2005. The first DePuy lawsuit was filed over a year and a half before the Depuy recall was announced confirming many expert's opinion of thinking the DePuy recall should have been issued much sooner.

Depuy actually denied any problems occurring with the product while at the same time warning doctors about the high failure rate in the beginning of 2010. The only thing they claimed was that they were likely to discontinue production if sales continued to decline and any rumor being spread about them issuing a recall were false. They also kept silent the Australian registry data that showed a high failure rate. Johnson and Johnson have had many recalls issued this year alone. Still fresh in the public memory is the incident of them paying off doctors undisclosed amounts of money that became a huge scandal.

The first of the hip replacement lawsuits to be filed in the United States against Johnson and Johnson was on July 15, 2010. Claims in the lawsuit accuse the company of being well aware of the flaws in the design causing it to be defective but yet never letting doctors or patients know. Worldwide 93,000 patients underwent surgery receiving the recalled Depuy ASR XL Acetablar metel on metel hip replacement system.

With a 1 out of 8 fail rate and several class action lawsuits already filed, Johnson and Johnson may have lawsuits against them numbered in the thousands. On November 18, 2010 The United States Judicial Panel on Multi District Litigation has scheduled a meeting to make a decision on the lawsuits filed.