Lawsuits filed over defective hip implants

By Daily Record Staff
Posted: 5:41 pm Wed, March 2, 2011

Seven Rochester-area residents filed suit in U.S. district court on Wednesday alleging they were injured by defective hip replacement implants. The suit was filed against hip implant manufacturer, DePuy Orthopaedics and its parent company, Johnson & Johnson.

Each plaintiff needed follow up surgery to remove and replace DePuy’s ASR Hip implant. The metal-on-metal ASR Hip implant differed from conventional prosthetics and was recalled by DePuy in August 2010, five years after it was placed on the market.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys allege, however, that DePuy knew about problems with the device long before the recall. Friction between the device’s metal ball and metal cup can cause the release of small metal particles into the bloodstream resulting in a condition called metallosis.

“Not long after the ASR Hip’s launch, failure reports began flooding into DePuy,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Hadley L. Matarazzo of Faraci Lange LLP in Rochester.

“The vast majority of the complaints came from patients who were forced to undergo revision surgery within just a few years of having the implant,” said Stephen S. Schwarz, Faraci Lange’s managing partner.

Area surgeons utilized the ASR Hip device based on representations that they would last longer than conventional hip replacement prostheses. The plaintiffs’ attorneys allege that DePuy continued to market and sell the device to surgeons and patients even after two British orthopaedic surgeons found problems with the device and expressed their concerns to the company.

Matarazzo said an estimated 93,000 ASR Hip devices have been implanted to date worldwide.

The exact number implanted in the Rochester area is unknown.

Faraci Lange represents other ASR Hip implant recipients and plans to file additional claims for those clients in the future.