A hip implant device manufacturer that since 2011 has been a defendant in multidistrict product liability litigation on two coasts is augmenting a settlement reached last year by an additional $90 million, according to the plaintiffs' co-lead counsel.

Wright Medical Technology will pay about $340 million to resolve would could be as many as 2,000 claims associated with hip implant failures, according to settlement agreements signed last November and on Tuesday.

The settlement will close hundreds of cases filed either as part of an MDL in the Northern District of Georgia or in Los Angeles Superior Court in judicial counsel coordinated proceedings, California's equivalent to a federal MDL.

“We think we have accomplished as favorable a settlement as could be done under the circumstances given Wright's situation financially,” said Michael McGlamry, a partner at Georgia's Pope McGlamry and the plaintiffs' co-lead counsel. McGlamry joined forces with Los Angeles attorney Raymond Boucher in hammering out the settlement agreements under the guidance of a Philadelphia mediator, retired U.S. Magistrate Diane Welsh.

Dana Ash and Matthew Taylor at Duane Morris in Philadelphia, who led a multistate legal team in Wright's defense, could not be reached for comment via phone or email.

The federal cases were assigned to U.S. District Judge William Duffey Jr. in Atlanta, where the first bellwether trial in 2015 resulted in an $11 million jury verdict, including $10 million in punitive damages, for Robyn Christiansen, a 73-year-old Salt Lake City ski instructor who had suffered a catastrophic failure of her Wright-manufactured hip implant.

Duffey eventually slashed $9 million from the jury's punitive damages award, reducing the judgment to $2.1 million. But McGlamry said the Christiansen verdict demonstrated the viability of the product liability claims.

The terms of last year's settlement included payment of about $170,000 to each claimant implanted with the Conserve Cup device and $120,000 to each claimant implanted with either a Dynasty or Lineage replacement hip that had failed.

The flaw that led to the implant failures was a metal-on-metal design that caused metal wear, according to court records in the case. The implant shed metallic debris into the surrounding tissue, leading to a condition known as metallosis, which inflamed and poisoned tissue, dissolved bone that anchored the implant and ultimately caused the implant to fail, court records said.

The new settlement agreement reached this week would include hundreds of cases excluded in the first agreement that, at the time, Wright Technology, the medical device company's new Chinese owners, and Wright's insurance carrier did not have sufficient funds to cover, McGlamry explained.

The new cases include those where hip implants failed after the statute of limitations on suing had expired, cases filed after the original settlement was consummated, and suits by plaintiffs who reconsidered after initially deciding not to accept a  settlement offer last year, McGlamry said.

The total $340 million payout, McGlamry added, should resolve every pending claim. Cases where plaintiffs remained determined not to settle will be dismissed and remanded to their states of origin, he said.

Included in the master settlement agreements is a “common benefit assessment,” McGlamry said, that would go to pay lead lawyers who steered the MDL. That assessment is set at 3.5 percent of the total, he said — an estimated $119 million. Individual plaintiffs would also pay legal fees to their personal lawyers from their settlement proceeds, he said.