North Carolina Product Liability Lawyer Blog
On November 16, 2017, yet another Texas jury 
delivered a huge verdict to the victims of the DePuy Pinnacle artificial hip. In this fourth bellwether trial, the jury awarded $247,000,000.00 to six plaintiffs and their spouses. According to news reports, after a two-month, hard-fought trial, the jury found that DePuy Orthopaedics and parent company Johnson & Johnson were liable to plaintiffs for the Pinnacle’s design and manufacturing defects. But the jury went further, concluding that the actions of the companies were fraudulent and deceptive, and that they had acted recklessly and maliciously in manufacturing, selling, and promoting the flawed products.
These last terms have special meaning in law: findings of fraud, deception, recklessness, and malice indicate that the companies went beyond mere negligence, that the defendants misbehaved intentionally or with a reckless disregard to the fact that their actions would harm innocent people. Because of these special findings, the plaintiffs were entitled to receive “punitive damages” from DePuy and J&J, which are money damages intended to punish defendants for especially bad behavior.
The jury awarded $90 million dollars in punitive damages to be paid by J&J, and $78 million in punitive damages to be paid by DePuy. That’s $168 million in total punitive damages. It is a lot of money.
The jury also awarded “compensatory damages” for the six individual plaintiffs. These are damages meant to compensate individuals for actual injuries. The jury awarded $77 million for such actual injuries as pain and suffering, past and future medical expenses, and other damages. This money award will be divided among the six plaintiffs based on an agreement among the parties.
Finally, the jury awarded the four spouses in the bellwether case “loss of consortium” damages of $1.7 million. Loss of consortium is a claim that arises when a spouse or close family member of the person injured by the defendants suffers separate losses, such as a loss of companionship or intimacy.
The jury in this case found DePuy and J&J intentionally misrepresented the product to the surgeons who would go on to implant the defective devices in patients. The jury also found that the defendants fraudulently concealed important information from the plaintiffs and their surgeons. The jury found that DePuy and J&J failed to adequately warn the plaintiffs and their surgeons about the risks involved in using the artificial hip. Finally, the jury found for the plaintiffs with the claims of design defect, manufacturing defect, and several claims of negligence.
It was another big win for the victims of the DePuy Pinnacle artificial hip.
Fourth Bellwether Trial Was Contentious From the Start
Before the case even started, Defendants asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the fourth bellwether trial on the grounds that the defendants did not waive their objections to holding the trial outside New York, which is where the plaintiffs lived. In multi-district litigation, the MDL is not permitted to try any case where venue is not otherwise proper unless the parties waive their objections to the improper venue. The DePuy Pinnacle MDL Judge Kinkeade ruled that Defendants had waived their objections to trying the case in the MDL court.
In reviewing the defendants’ writ of mandamus, two of three judges on the Fifth Circuit found that Defendants had not waived their objections. The Fifth Circuit encouraged but did not require that Judge Kinkeade postpone the fourth bellwether trial. Judge Kinkeade decided to move forward with the trial, but this will surely be one ground for appeal by DePuy and J&J.
At the trial Plaintiffs argued that DePuy and J&J rushed the medical device to market, failed to undertake adequate premarket studies, did not provide sufficient warnings about the dangers of the hip implants, and defectively manufactured these MoM artificial hips. Defendants countered that the Pinnacle hip is safe and that the failure rates are in line with industry standards.
Several weeks into trial a startling allegation emerged: that a lawyer for DePuy may have tried to influence the testimony of a surgeon who treated three of the plaintiffs. Dr. David Shein submitted an affidavit on October 14, 2017 stating that a DePuy sales rep was being pressured by DePuy lawyers regarding Dr. Shein’s upcoming trial testimony. Dr. Shein reported that the sales rep said the DePuy lawyers were “on him like crazy” and were putting “big time pressure” on him. According to Dr. Shein’s affdavit, the sales rep stated that “there could be ramifications” for Dr. Shein based on his testimony in the Depuy Pinnacle trial.
Judge Kinkeade ordered an investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys’ Office. Following a hearing on the issue, Judge Kinkeade denied plaintiffs’ request to introduce the allegation of witness tampering to the jury. The judge decided that there was insufficient evidence that tied DePuy and Johnson & Johnson to the alleged actions of their lawyers. It also appears the DePuy sales rep backed off some of his most alarming comments reflected in the affidavit.
You can read more about the alleged witness tampering here.
Three Pinnacle Hip Bellwether Trials Have Resulted in Huge Awards for Plaintiffs
On March 17, 2016, in the second bellwether trial, a Texas jury awarded five plaintiffs $502,000,000.00, which included $360 million in punitive damages, for the injuries the plaintiffs sustained after the DePuy Pinnacle failed. The jury concluded that the Pinnacle hip sold by DePuy was defective and that DePuy knew about the flaws but did not warn patients and their doctors of the risks.
On December 1, 2016, in the third bellwether trial, the jury awarded six plaintiffs $1,041,311,648.17, which included $28,311,648.17 in compensatory damages and $4,000,000.00 in loss of consortium damages to the spouses of four of the plaintiffs. Finally, the jury awarded $1,008,000,000.00 in punitive damages total for the plaintiffs, and $1,000,000.00 in punitive damages for the four spouses.
With the fourth bellwether trial now complete, three juries have now awarded $1.79 billion dollars in consecutive bellwether trials. Plainly, several juries have concluded that DePuy and J&J acted with reckless disregard to the safety of innocent people, who simply needed a functioning, non-defective artificial hip.
I believe it is past time for DePuy and J&J to come to the table and offer to settle the thousands of DePuy Pinnacle cases that remain in this litigation.
If you have a DePuy Pinnacle hip that may have failed and injured you, give me a call today.