Personal Injury Law Specialist in Phoenix, Arizona

I am pleased to announce I have been selected by my peers for inclusion in the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America©  in the field of Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs, for the ninth consecutive year.

On November 16, 2017, a federal jury in Dallas ordered Johnson & Johnson and its DePuy Orthopaedics unit to pay $247 million to six patients who claimed they were injured by defective Pinnacle hip implants.  This is the third straight bellwether trial win for claimants, as the jury found the DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal implants were defectively designed and that the companies failed to warn the patients about the risks. This follows two other wins for the plaintiffs, in which juries awarded $500 million to six claimants in March, 2016 (later reduced by the Court to $150 million) and $1 billion for six claimants in December, 2016 (later reduced by the Court to $543 million).  Along with the other verdicts, this latest verdict is expected to be appealed by DePuy.

Phoenix, Arizona mass tort product liability attorney Stephen I. Leshner has successfully resolved over 100 cases involving defective hip replacement systems and has many pending DePuy Pinnacle cases.  While there have been global settlements in the DePuy ASR, Zimmer, Stryker, Wright, Biomet, Encore and Smith & Nephew cases, no global settlements have been reached in cases involving DePuy Pinnacle (over 9,700 pending cases) which still remain in the bellwether trial process, despite the claimant’s trial success.  If you are someone close to you has been injured as a result of any defective metal-on-metal hip, which required the surgical removal and replacement of the hip replacement system or its components, please contact Steve Leshner for a free consultation.

DePuy Synthes markets the Attune® Knee System as having “patented technologies” that improve range of motion and give patients “the confidence of a stable knee replacement.”  However, in recent months, DePuy Synthes has filed dozens of reports with the Food and Drug Administration documenting premature failures of the Attune® Knee System that have resulted in the destabilization of patients’ knee replacements and painful revision surgeries.

Additionally, in an article recently published in the Journal of Knee Surgery, nine prominent orthopedic surgeons reported that they have encountered an unusually high-rate of premature failures of the Attune® Knee System.  The surgeons attributed the failures to the debonding of the tibial implant-cement interface.  In other words, the surgeons discovered that the “glue” typically used to hold an implant in place does not “stick” adequately to the tibial component of the Attune® Knee System.  As a result, the tibial component of the Attune® Knee System loosens and the entire knee replacement is destabilized.

Thousands of patients have been implanted with the Attune® Knee System.  Symptoms associated with premature failures of the Attune® Knee System include:

• Instability and Loosening
• Unusual Swelling
• Decreased Range of Motion
• Persistent Pain

In most cases, the only medical solution for patients who experience a premature failure of their Attune® Knee System is to undergo a revision surgery to remove the implant and replace it.  These revision surgeries are often more painful and invasive than the initial replacement surgery.

If you have an Attune® Knee System that either has been or needs to be removed and replaced, please contact Phoenix Arizona Mass Tort Product Liability Attorney Steve Leshner for a free consultation.