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Johnson & Johnson (J&J) was yesterday ordered by a court in California to pay $8.3 million in damages in one of the more than 11,000 lawsuits pending over marketing a faulty designed artificial hip made by its subsidiary DePuy Orthopedics.  In August 2010, DePuy recalled 37,000 hip implants in the US and the remaining worldwide after many of the devices began failing prematurely. (See: J&J unit DePuy issues global recall of 93,000 hip replacement systems)
In addition to costly revision surgeries to correct pain, dislocations and infections, or in many cases a second hip-replacement surgery, patients who filed lawsuits claimed they also suffered from tissue death around the joints resulting from excess metal debris. Loren Kransky, a former prison guard from Montana had filed a case against J&J's subsidiary DePuy for marketing a faulty designed ASR XL hip implant that was later recalled. While awarding the damages, the jury however rejected Kransky's claim that DePuy failed to adequately warn of the risks associated with the implant, which disallowed Kransky from collecting any punitive damages. The jury agreed with Kransky that DePuy's Articular Surface Replacement, or known as ASR XL implant was defectively designed and caused metal poisoning and other health problems after he underwent surgery in 2007.
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