DePuy Hip Replacement Lawsuit Reach Canadian Courts

In August, DePuy Orthopaedics have voluntarily recalled their hip devices, ASR XL Acetabular System and the ASR Hip Resurfacing System, from the global market after evidence of their high failure rate was revealed. A design flaw caused health complications in patients who has had the devices implanted in them. The recall means that further testing is required for all recipients and one out of eight patients would require an expensive revision surgery.

 The hip implants were sold to countries such as Australia (where the ASRs were withdrawn domestically almost a year before the worldwide recall), England, Ireland and Canada. Hip replacement recipients from Australia as well as the United States have already started to file DePuy hip lawsuits against the manufacturer. 

A lawyer from Canada sought the Quebec Superior Court to gain permission to file a national class-action lawsuit against DePuy Orthopaedics. It is yet to be known just how many recipients are affected by the recall in Canada.

If you have been implanted with a DePuy ASR hip replacement device, you should immediately consult with your surgeon to discuss your health status and to undergo testing and evaluation. Filing a DePuy hip lawsuit might be necessary to regain the losses you have experienced as a consequence to having their devices implanted in you. 

Source:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Lawyer+targets+maker+defective+prosthetic+hips+proposed+class+action+lawsuit/3892749/story.html

DePuy Orthopedic Settles Kickback Charges

More than three years of legal squabbling have finally reached an end as federal prosecutors settled with five orthopedic device companies after thorough investigation to allegations that the said companies paid bribes to surgeons to favor their products.

In March 2005, five orthopedic companies – Zimmer, Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy Orthopedics, Smith & Nephew, Stryker Corp. and Biomet Inc. – received subpoenas from the US Department of Justice through the US attorney’s office in Newark, NJ. The subpoenas aimed to seek further information pertaining to consulting contracts, professional service agreements and other agreements. The five companies reached to a $310 million agreement to resolve charges proposing they paid kickbacks to doctors.

These five orthopedic device giants account for almost 95 percent of the market when it comes to hip and knee implants. Four of them agreed to pay a total of $310 million, while all agreed to be closely monitored. The amounts were practically based on each company’s market share. According to the in-depth investigations, there is substantial evidence suggesting that health care decisions were being made based on the doctor’s wallet and not on the patient’s welfare.

US Attorney Christopher Christie says the companies bribed orthopedic surgeons huge sums of money to serve as consultants and to exclusively use their products, but their patients and the hospitals of the doctors were blind of the relationships. While Christie did not say if any doctors would be charged as the investigations progress, he did clarify that no company employees were being charged at the moment.

Biomet obliged to pay $26.9 million; Smith & Nephew, $28.9 million; and DePuy, $84.7 million. Stryker Corp. on the other hand will not be paying fines as a part of its agreement. It voluntarily cooperated with persecutors and agreed to engage in a non-prosecution pact; while Zimmer will pay $169.5 million and will be monitored by former US Attorney General John Ashcroft. The United States Department of Justice began probing the industry in 2005 due to concerns that companies may have paid bribes to the orthopedic surgeons in return of using and endorsing their products.

According to US Attorney Christopher Christie, the industry has been routinely violating the anti-kickback law by paying physicians for the sheer purpose of exclusive product use. Before the investigation, several orthopedic surgeons in the country have made medical decisions based on how much money they can make or in simpler terms, choosing the device of the “highest bidder” to implant. The US Department of Justice hopes that with these agreements in place, doctors will now make decisions based on what is best for their patients, and not what is best for their bank accounts.

The Dangers of Giving Information Online: DePuy Hip Replacement Patients

When DePuy announced a product recall for their metal hip replacement implants last August, the entire American population was alarmed. Unlike any other pharmaceutical company requesting a recall for a certain type of drug, a recall for hip implants received by more than ninety thousand people cannot be remedied by simply throwing a bottle of pills to the trash.

 The recall was due to the “metal on metal” hip implants’ high failure rate. DePuy’s ASR Hip Resurfacing System fails in about 12% of the recipients and the ASR XL Acetabular System fails in about 13% of patients. The worse part is, DePuy reported to have sold about 93,000 implants in the past year, which means that today, more than 11,000 people are likely to experience problems from the DePuy hip replacement devices.

If you went through a hip replacement surgery in the last two years and found out that you received a hip replacement implant from DePuy, the logical thing to do is to contact an attorney and file a case… but not so fast.

The recall of the defective hip implants has inspired hundreds new websites intended for people who might have been affected by the products and are thinking of filing a case against DePuy. These websites appear to be sponsored or affiliated with a law firm at first glance, and that any information that the patient gives will be passed on to a lawyer for a personal case review. However, these websites are not affiliated with any law firm, and were actually created and run by a marketing company.

These websites will ask for your name, phone numbers, home address and email address plus some information about your condition or complaint, promising to give you a “free case review”. But if you thoroughly read the fine print, these websites are going to use your personal information for marketing and promotional purposes.

When you submit your personal information and your contact information, you are actually agreeing to receive “future advertisements” from the website, which in simpler terms, mean spam. If the website says your case “will be reviewed by one or more attorneys and/or law firms”, there is a huge chance that the marketing company running the website will be selling your information to as many law firms as possible.

 It is understandable to have the need to seek legal help, but be very careful in giving away personal information online. Look for a specific name of a lawyer or a law firm in the website, and read the Terms and Conditions of the website. Protect yourself from being scammed.

 Learn more about litigation, process, settlements and all sorts of updates regarding the lawsuit, visit the DePuy Hip Replacement Lawsuit Website.