$240 Million Settlement Agreed in Wright Defective Hip Implant MDL

Santa Clara, CAA $240 million settlement has been reached in multidistrict product liability litigation over defective Wright hip implants. The settlement effectively ends five years of litigation brought by 1,300 claimants who alleged their Wright hip implants failed anywhere from 150 days to eight years following hip replacement surgery.

Under the terms of the Wright hip implant settlement the company will pay $170,000 to each claimant who received the Conserve Cup device. Additionally, the company will pay $120,000 to each claimant who received either a Dynasty or Lineage replacement hip. Further, Wright will establish a fund to reimburse patients who suffered "extraordinary injury" resulting from the failure of their hip implants.

According to court documents, the defect causing the failure of the hip implants was a metal-on-metal design that resulted in metal wear and shedding of metallic debris into surrounding tissue. This led to “metallosis”, a condition in which the tissue becomes inflamed and toxic, dissolving bone that anchored the implant. Ultimately, the metallosis led to failure of the implants.

The settlement affects multidistrict litigation now pending in federal court in Atlanta and consolidated litigation in Los Angeles Superior Court in California

In November 2015, a jury awarded an $11 million verdict against Wright Medical Technology Inc. Considered a bellweather trial in multidistrict litigation (MDL), the Atlanta jury found the plaintiff did have a defective hip implant, and that Wright had misrepresented the safety of the device.

Further to that that decision, the award was amended in early April 2016 reducing the punitive damages award from $10 million to $1.1 million. The court let stand the $1 million award for compensatory damages.

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