also read… Stryker settles the first 4 hip-implant lawsuits, 600 more are in the queue
also read.. Stryker says that its Modular Hip Recall will cost up to $390M
Stryker to Pay $1.43B to Settle Hip Implant Cases (ABC News)
Medical implant maker Stryker will pay at least $1.43 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits from patients who had to have surgery to remove problematic hip implants, under a deal announced Monday.
The agreement, brokered by a New Jersey Superior Court judge, resolves state and federal lawsuits against the maker of orthopedics. It was announced Monday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Stryker said the $1.43 billion figure represents the “low end of the range of probable loss to resolve these matters.”
The lawsuits stem from two hip implants that Stryker recalled due to corrosion and other problems in 2012. One year ago Johnson & Johnson paid $2.5 billion to settle 8,000 lawsuits from patients who had to have the company’s metal ball-and-socket hip implant removed or replaced.
Plaintiffs in 39 states alleged Kalamazoo-based Stryker sold defective hips that corroded while in patients’ bodies and caused illness, including pain and swelling in the tissue around the implant.
“The settlement represents one of the largest medical device settlements with an unlimited compensation fund,” said Minneapolis lawyer Charles Zimmerman, who helped negotiate the deal as part of the lead-counsel committee for the case. “We are pleased that we were able to reach a settlement with such meaningful relief.”
Stryker Corp. expects to make most of the payments by the end of 2015.
Thousands of cases from patients across the country have been consolidated under a single federal judge in Minnesota in a “multi-district litigation,” a common type of mass lawsuit filed against health care companies, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis reported.