A federal appeals court has ruled in a precedential decision that the trial judge presiding over a woman's lawsuit against the maker of an allegedly defective hip implant that injured her should not have granted summary judgment against her on the basis that she filed her claims too late.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Wednesday reversed an Eastern District of Pennsylvania judge's grant of summary judgment in favor of device manufacturer Zimmer in plaintiff Marilyn Adams' case against the company, finding that the question of when the statute of limitations began to run is one a jury must answer.

The federal court's decision in Adams v. Zimmer came down within an hour of a pair of similar decisions issued by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Saksek v. Janssen and Winter v. Janssen. In those cases, the justices overturned a Superior Court ruling that tossed out lawsuits against drugmaker Janssen by two plaintiffs who alleged they developed excess breast tissue as a result of taking antipsychotic drug Risperdal. The high court said both the trial and appellate courts were wrong to dispose of the issue on summary judgment because it's for a jury to decide whether and when there was sufficient media coverage and medical literature detailing the possible link between Risperdal and excess breast tissue to alert the plaintiffs that they may have been injured.

Similarly, in Adams, the plaintiff alleged her Zimmer-made hip implant deteriorated and she was injured by shards that had fragmented from the whole. She filed suit in 2017, after the damage was confirmed during a 2015 surgery. The defendants argued she should have been on notice of her injuries beforehand, according to Third Circuit Judge Anthony Scirica's opinion.

"The central issue in this case is whether a jury could conclude Adams reasonably did not discover her injury until February 12, 2015, when Dr. [Prodromos] Ververeli apprised her of his intraoperative finding that her implant had deteriorated and emitted metal shards into her hip," Scirica said. "The district court concluded there can be no dispute that the information available to Adams in her preoperative visits would have put a reasonably diligent person on notice of her injury as a matter of law. In reviewing that determination at summary judgment we must 'view the record and draw inferences in a light most favorable to' Adams as 'the non-moving party.' Doing so, we cannot conclude that summary judgment was appropriate. As in the several Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases before this one, the question '[w]hether [a plaintiff] should have acted with greater diligence to investigate' or otherwise should have known of her injury earlier 'can only be seen as an issue of fact.'"

That question, therefore, is for a jury to address, Scirica said.

"While a jury may ultimately credit Zimmer's contention that Adams knew or should have known about her injury at some point before the February 2015 revision surgery, Adams has raised factual issues of notice and knowledge that Pennsylvania law requires a jury to resolve," Scirica said.

Adams is represented by Charles "Chip" Becker, Joe Osborne and Tom Kline of Kline & Specter. Becker and Kline also represent the plaintiffs in the Saksek and Winter cases.

In a statement, they said of the Adams ruling, "Today was an important day in Pennsylvania law concerning the discovery rule and the statute of limitations. The Third Circuit's decision in Adams rearticulates and aligns with long-standing Pennsylvania law as reflected in today's decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court applying the discovery rule in the context of Risperdal litigation. The reversal of summary judgment allows Ms. Adams' case to move toward trial. She looks forward to her day in court."

Zimmer is represented by Bruce G. Jones of Faegre Baker Daniels in Minneapolis, who did not respond to a request for comment.