DePuy: Hip implants: Second Jury Trial Starts in Chicago

In continuing coverage of the second trial against Johnson & Johnson's DePuy unit over its metal-on-metal hip implants, Bloomberg News (3/14, Harris, Voreacos) reports DePuy Orthopedic Products President Andrew Ekdahl "told a Chicago jury that the company recalled 93,000 hip implants in August 2010 because they weren't meeting 'clinical expectations.' Ekdahl's testimony came on the third day of a state court trial in which Carol Strum, 54, claims" her ASR XL hip implant had to be replaced after three years because it "was defective." In his opening statement Wednesday, DePuy attorney Richard Sarver maintained that the "device was not defective. 'Many factors contribute to the overall revision rate so a single root cause cannot be defined at this time,' Sarver said. 'We absolutely didn't say the product is a defective product.'" In contrast, Strum's attorney Denman Heard, during his opening statement, "told jurors" the ASR implant's "design flaws caused it to shed chromium and cobalt debris into surrounding tissue."