Witness at trial claims medical-device firm failed to forecast flaws in hip implants.

Bloomberg News (1/29, Voreacos, Possley, Feeley) reports, "Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) failed in developing an all-metal hip implant to forecast key flaws that led to its recall in 2010, a project manager told jurors in the first of 10,000 lawsuits over the device to go to trial." According to Bloomberg, "lawyers for plaintiff Loren Kransky seek to show in a trial that began Jan. 25 in state court in Los Angeles that J&J's DePuy unit knew its ASR hip implant had design defects and hid them from doctors. Magnus Flett was the first witness, and he told how DePuy analyzed what might cause the ASR hips to fail."