(August 4, 2011)
Catherine Falvey was one of the first people to make a claim against DePuy for their defective Pinnacle Acetabular Cup System hip replacement device back in April. She filed a motion to the judicial panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) to move all Pinnacle actions to either the Southern District of Texas or the Central District of California.
Falvey states that if the JPML cannot transfer the Pinnacle actions separately from DePuy’s other actions (on recalls dealing with the ASR XL Total Hip System and ASR Hip Resurfacing System), then they should all be combined into one action.
What is Multidistrict Litigation? It’s a way to consolidate pretrial procedures from numerous claims with similar cases in front of a single judge. This method saves both time and money, as well as avoiding inconsistent discoveries. In order to be eligible for MDL, all parties in the group must share at least one common question of fact, and consolidating must be convenient to all those involved. In this case, both DePuy and Falvey agreed that MDL would be beneficial.
When talking about DePuy’s defective Pinnacle device, Falvey said that it “causes a high percentage of patients to develop metallosis, biologic toxicity, and an early and high failure rate due to the release of metal particles in the patient’s surrounding tissue when the cobalt-chromium metal formal head rotates within the cobalt-chromium metal acetabular liner giving rise to severe cobalt-chromium metal toxicity in the patient’s blood, tissues and organs.”
She also said that she anticipates DePuy to recall their Pinnacle Devices, as 1,300 reports have been submitted to the FDA about this device since August 2010.
If you have suffered from a defective DePuy Hip Replacement product – including the Pinnacle Device – you may be eligible for compensation. call us at 1-800-246-4878 to speak with one of our attorneys.
