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 On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade in the Northern District
of Texas said he was compelled to reduce the verdict under a Texas
state law limiting punitive damages according to a specific formula.
In March, the five plaintiffs and three of their spouses had been
collectively awarded roughly $360 million in punitive damages, along
with $140 million in compensatory damages, following a two-month
trial.
Kinkeade also denied J&J's bid to set aside the verdicts and order a
new trial. The company had argued jurors were biased by hearing
irrelevant and unfair evidence during trial. Plaintiffs' lawyers had
claimed the company was seeking an improper "do-over" after its
trial strategy backfired.
Mark Lanier and Richard Arsenault, lead lawyers for the Pinnacle
plaintiffs, said they disagreed with Texas' cap on punitive damages
but were pleased J&J's bid for a new trial had been rejected.
A lawyer for J&J, John Beisner, said that the company is "confident
that the trial verdict will be reversed on appeal."
J&J and DePuy are facing roughly 8,400 lawsuits over the devices,
which plaintiffs say contain design flaws that cause them to fail.
The lawsuits claim friction between the devices' metal components
can shed ions into the bloodstream, leading to injuries such as
tissue death, bone erosion and high levels of metal in their blood.
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J&J and DePuy have denied any wrongdoing in connection with
developing and marketing the devices. DePuy stopped selling the
metal-on-metal version of Pinnacle hips in 2013. That year, it paid
$2.5 billion to settle more than 7,000 lawsuits over another
metal-on-metal hip device, the ASR, which was recalled in 2010.
The $500 million verdict in March was the second in a trial
involving Pinnacle hip devices. J&J was cleared of liability in the
first trial, which involved a single plaintiff and ended in 2014. A
third trial involving multiple plaintiffs is scheduled for
September.
(Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by Tom Brown)
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