Stryker Global Settlement Expected to Top $1 Billion Over Recalled Rejuvenate and ABG II Hip Stems
After trial: The $1 billion figure is the reported expected total payout, not a fixed fund, and Stryker's liability under the program was uncapped. Payments were scheduled to begin in the summer of 2015.
Won by Anapol Weiss.
On Nov. 3, 2014, Howmedica Osteonics, doing business as Stryker Orthopaedics, settled the claims of about 3,000 people who had surgery to remove recalled Rejuvenate and ABG II modular hip stems. The deal was announced in the Bergen County courthouse and paired with a parallel proceeding in the federal MDL in Minnesota. It sets a base award per failed implant plus enhancements for complications, with no fixed fund, and was expected to pay out more than $1 billion. Thomas Anapol of Anapol Schwartz sat on the court-appointed Plaintiff Steering Committee for the New Jersey litigation.
What happened
Stryker voluntarily recalled its Rejuvenate and ABG II modular-neck hip stems on July 3, 2012. The company pointed to a risk of fretting and corrosion where the metal components meet, deterioration that can shed metal debris and metal ions into the surrounding tissue. Reported symptoms included pain, swelling and the death of tissue and bone, and many patients needed a second operation, called a revision, to take the implant out.
Lawsuits followed quickly. The New Jersey state cases were centralized in Bergen County before Superior Court Judge Brian R. Martinotti in January 2013. Five months later the federal cases were consolidated before U.S. District Judge David Frank in Minnesota, home state of Stryker's parent company. New Jersey alone had more than 2,100 cases, with about 1,700 more in the federal MDL and others in state courts elsewhere.
On the morning of Nov. 3, 2014, Judge Martinotti called lawyers to an emergency conference at 4 p.m. in his Bergen County courtroom, where the settlement was announced and signed. Judge Frank convened a parallel proceeding in St. Paul at the same hour. The agreement resolved the claims of about 3,000 people with Howmedica Osteonics, the Mahwah, N.J. company that does business as Stryker Orthopaedics. It followed a series of mediation sessions led by retired U.S. Magistrate Judge Diane Welsh that began in July, and of 21 bellwether cases selected for mediation, 20 settled. Not one case went to trial.
The program pays a base award of $300,000 per failed implant, with reductions for patients who received the device after an earlier total hip replacement or who were older when it was implanted. Enhancements cover complications. A patient who needed another revision after removal received an added $175,000, and one whose femur had to be cut to remove the implant received $75,000 more. More serious complications such as foot drop, heart attack, stroke and death carried larger enhancements. To qualify, a claimant had to have had both the implant and the removal surgery at a U.S. hospital, with the removal at least 180 days after the implant, and to show failure through evidence such as elevated blood cobalt or an abnormal scan.
There was no fixed fund and no cap on Stryker's liability, so the total depended on how many eligible patients enrolled. Reporting at the time put the expected payout above $1 billion. Registration closed Dec. 14, enrollment on Jan. 16, 2015, and the first payments were expected in the summer of 2015. The Garden City Group administered the program, and appeals of individual awards went to three special masters, with final review by Judge Welsh.
The Plaintiff Steering Committee for the New Jersey litigation was chaired by Ellen Relkin of Weitz & Luxenberg, who served as liaison counsel. Thomas Anapol of Anapol Schwartz in Philadelphia sat on the committee alongside lawyers from Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, Robins Kaplan, Seeger Weiss and Pogust Braslow & Millrood.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.New Jersey Law Journal, Mary Pat Gallagher, '$1B Settlement Reached in Stryker Hip-Implant Mass Tort', Nov. 10, 2014·Archived copy
- 2.Stryker Corp., SEC Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, settlement announcement, Nov. 3, 2014
- 3.Weitz & Luxenberg, 'W&L, Allied Firms Obtain Stryker Hip Implants Settlement; Could Top $1 Billion', Nov. 4, 2014·Archived copy
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