Johnson & Johnson agrees to pay about $1 billion to resolve hip implant lawsuits

WILMINGTON: Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay about $1billion to resolve most lawsuits claiming it sold defective metal-on-metal hips that ultimately had to be removed, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

With the agreement, J&J has now resolved more than 95% of the 6,000 cases in which surgeons extracted the Pinnacle implants because of defects that left patients unable to walk and in pain. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorised to talk publicly about the accords.

The roughly $1 billion total includes an earlier settlement for more than $400 million. Still pending are about 4,500 suits by patients with artificial hips that aren’t made totally of metal or haven’t been surgically removed, the people said.


Pinnacle Ultamet devices weren’t covered by J&J’s 2013 settlement of suits targeting its ASR line of artificial hips. In 2010, J&J recalled 93,000 of those implants worldwide, saying 12% failed within five years. With legal fees, the cost of that settlement to J&J climbed to more than $4 billion. J&J is settling similar cases in India.