Over 9,000 lawsuits have now been filed in state and federal courts around the country against Johnson & Johnson and DePuy, alleging its DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip implant device was manufactured defectively, the risks of which the company failed to warn doctors and patients. Allegations include more frequent and rapid device failures due to the metal-on-metal design flaw, leading to severe injuries like tissue death, bone erosion and high levels of metal in the blood. Like any mass tort of this magnitude, the cases were consolidated into a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in 2011 in the Northern District of Texas, presided over by the U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade in Dallas. Part of the MDL process includes a bellwether selection, during which the parties select cases they want a jury to hear—bellwethers—with the goal of moving the overall litigation toward a global resolution (bellwether literally means the sheep with the bell on its neck, leading the entire flock).
The first bellwether trial against Johnson & Johnson and DePuy, involving a single plaintiff from Montana, ended in a defense verdict. The second bellwether consolidated five plaintiffs from Texas, and ended with a $502 million verdict that was later reduced to about $150 million under Texas law capping punitive damages. Given the outcome of the first and second bellwether verdicts, more bellwether trials are required in order to accurately establish case valuation.
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