The start of the faulty hip replacement DePuy litigation which was due to commence on September 9th has been delayed a further two weeks to allow additional time for the two parties to prepare.
The latest rescheduling of the first ‘bellwether’ trial was due to a late substitution of case; with the original plaintiff Faye Dorney-Madgitz being replaced by Ann McCracken for reasons which have not been made public.
Although Ann McCracken´s case was originally listed to be heard in August, U.S. District Judge David A. Katz found it appropriate to delay the start of the DePuy litigation in order give both parties more time for discovery and for the consideration of other legal matters.
The judge has already agreed with DePuy´s lawyers that the worldwide recall of the DePuy ASR XL Acetabular Hip Replacement System and the ASR Articular Surface Hip Replacement System should not be referred to in court, as Ann McCracken´s injury would have occurred irrespective of whether her DePuy hip replacement had been recalled or not.
Ann originally received a DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip replacement system in August 2009 which had to be removed in January 2011 after metallosis from the faulty medical device caused damage to the soft tissue around her hip and resulted in a painful hip dislocation.
The primary purpose of Ann´s trial – and the other ‘Bellwether’ DePuy litigation still to be scheduled – is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the plaintiff´s cases and how the juries in each ‘Bellwether’ trial respond to them.
If verdicts are delivered in favour of the plaintiffs – and benchmarks are established for the value of DePuy hip replacement compensation settlements – DePuy would be expected to make offers of settlement for the remaining 7,800 DePuy injury compensation claims which are attached to the existing DePuy litigation.
Should it not be possible to calculate future settlements because of irregular awards of compensation in the `Bellwether` DePuy litigation, the outstanding claims (all 7,800 of them) would be returned to the U.S. District Courts in which they were filed to be heard individually.
This would have serious consequences for claims for DePuy personal injury compensation in Ireland, which would then each have to go through a court hearing before they could be resolved.