Johnson & Johnson subsidiary DePuy Orthopaedics denied Scott Almhjell’s claim for injuries he suffered from a recalled hip replacement on October 15 of this year per court filings.
Mr. Almhjell, a Gulf War Veteran, had hip replacement surgery and then had to have the hip replacement surgically removed from his body. DePuy says that Mr. Almhjell was not injured at all or alternatively, he caused his own injury and therefore is not entitled to compensation.
It was in Arizona where Mr. Almhjell underwent hip replacement surgery in 2007 with DePuy’s ASR hip implant. Even at this time, DePuy knew this ASR implant failed in other patients and those patients had to undergo subsequent revision surgery. Even with this knowledge, DePuy continued to sell the defective replacement to patients like Mr. Almhjell without informing them of the possible problems and what consequences other patients suffered.
It took about three years until DePuy decided to recall the ASR implant. It’s a decision that came after hundreds of people suffered serious pain and hip replacement failure. DePuy finally admitted that the hip implant failed in about 13 percent of patients.
To this day, Mr. Almhjell suffers pain that is directly related to the DePuy hip implant and his injuries may be permanent. After the recall was announced by DePuy, Mr. Almhjell filed a claim in order to recover damages from what the hip replacement recall caused.
DePuy filed a response in October saying that Almhjell was not injured at all and also said if Almhjell was injured at all, “it was because of an unforeseeable illness, unavoidable accident, or preexisting conditions, without any negligence or culpable conduct by DePuy Orthopaedics.”
If you have been affected by the DePuy ASR recall, you may want to contact the attorneys at Childers, Schlueter, & Smith, LLC for a free consultaton and review. Childers, Schlueter & Smith, LLC continues to investigate and review the claims of patients nationwide who received a DePuy hip implant device since July of 2003. If you or a loved one has received the DePuy ASR XL Acetabular System or DePuy ASR Hip Resurfacing System and have experienced some type of hip pain, cobaltism, developed metallosis, required an additional hip surgery, or any of failure with your hip replacement device, contact us today.
