Today, it was reported that five people close to the DePuy ASR MDL 2197 litigation confirmed settlement discussions. You should know that last night the leadership of the Executive Committee, emailed the following statement to the reporters:
“The lawyers and leadership in the cooperating jurisdictions are working for the benefit of the 35,000 United States patients who have this recalled medical device. We have reviewed some 50 million pages of documents that have been produced and have taken over 50 depositions. At this time we have a significant number of trials set with the company and we are primarily focusing our efforts on trial preparation. Any comment relating to settlement that does not come from leadership, the Court, or from the company itself, is speculative and uninformed.”
The first jury trial will start in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 22, 2012. While it is part of the California proceedings (not the DePuy MDL), California leadership and the MDL leadership have been working cooperatively to develop evidence, witnesses and experts for this case as well as all cases across the country. Next month, another DePuy ASR trial is set to start in Illinois which is also part of the cooperating jurisdictions. Judge Katz, who presides over the MDL, selected two plaintiffs’ cases for trial. The first will occur in May in Toledo and the second will be in July of 2013.
We just wanted our clients and others to know the correct version of events and have a better understanding what really is going on in the DePuy ASR litigation.
