DALLAS (CN) - A federal jury in Dallas ruled Thursday that DePuy Orthopaedics should pay five Texans a total $498 million for severe medical complications they suffered as a result of the company's defective metal-on-metal hip implants.
A subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, DePuy is facing several thousand such lawsuits over its discontinued Pinnacle hip implants.
The cases have since been consolidated under multidistrict litigation in Dallas Federal Court under U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade.
The jury awarded over $130 million in compensatory damages and over $360 million in punitive damages, according to plaintiffs' attorney W. Mark Lanier, of Houston.
"There are thousands of these cases, and Johnson & Johnson needs to get responsible," Lanier said after the verdict.
During the two-month trial, the five plaintiffs claimed the implants were defectively designed and led to high levels of metal debris due to quicker than expected wear and tear.
DePuy said it plans to appeal the verdict.
In October 2014, the first Pinnacle case to go to trial ended when a Dallas federal jury cleared DePuy of liability and ordered the plaintiff take nothing.Depuy said at the time that it "expects additional cases to be tried" and that it "remains committed to the long-term and vigorous defense" of the cases.
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