DePuy hip implants have been in the news quite a bit over that past several months. First problems with the ASR Hip Replacemnet system spurred thousands of lawsuits and more recently dozens of lawsuits over the company’s Pinnacle hip replacement have been surfacing throughout that nation.
Back in December of last year, federal lawsuits filed over problems with the DePuy ASR hip replacement system were consolidated to the northern district of Ohio under an MDL, or multi district litigation. It now appears that federal DePuy Pinnacle lawsuits will be following in the same path.
Yesterday a U.S. district panel on Multidistrict Litigation issued an order to consolidate DePuy Pinnacle hip implant lawsuits to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas for pretrial proceedings. The MDL will result in the transfer of at least 57 pending DePuy Pinnacle lawsuits.
The decision will allow all of the cases to be administrated over in a single Court and will reduce the burden on the federal court system. Since all of the lawsuit claim similar allegations and have common defendants, consolidating the cases will greatly reduce the duplicate discovery and inconsistencies that may have occurred in pretrial hearings had they been heard in many different Courts.
The Panel selected the Northern District of Texas because of its central location and favorable docket schedule. The location also accommodates both the plaintiffs and defendants requests for venue location.
The MDL will be presided over by Judge James E. Kinkeade.
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