DePuy Hip Replacement Lawsuit: ASR Recall, Pinnacle Verdicts

The DePuy hip replacement lawsuit is the sprawling body of litigation against Johnson & Johnson and its orthopedic subsidiary, DePuy Orthopaedics, over two metal-on-metal hip implants — the ASR and the Pinnacle — that shed cobalt and chromium debris and failed at rates far above the industry norm. Since DePuy’s 2010 worldwide recall of the ASR line, the cases have produced more than $4 billion in settlements and some of the largest jury verdicts in medical device history. Most claims have been resolved. A small number of federal ASR cases were still pending as of 2026.¹

Which Implants Are Involved

Two DePuy product lines sit at the center of the litigation. The Articular Surface Replacement (ASR) system was recalled in August 2010. The Pinnacle system, when fitted with the metal-on-metal Ultamet liner, was never recalled but was quietly discontinued in 2013.²

Both devices used a cobalt-chromium ball articulating against a cobalt-chromium cup liner, rather than the polyethylene liner used in most hip replacements. The design was marketed as more durable, but friction between the two metal surfaces ground off tiny particles that lodged in the surrounding tissue and entered the bloodstream.

Roughly 37,000 ASR implants were placed in U.S. patients and about 93,000 worldwide.³ Nearly 150,000 patients received a Pinnacle.⁴

The Injuries Behind the Claims

Cases against DePuy have generally centered on the same cluster of harms. Locally, patients developed metallosis (a buildup of metal debris in soft tissue), pseudotumors, tissue necrosis, bone loss, and severe pain. Systemically, elevated cobalt and chromium levels caused a condition sometimes called cobaltism, with neurological symptoms including cognitive decline, tremors, and hearing or vision loss, along with cardiac problems such as arrhythmias and cardiomyopathy.⁵⁶

The failure numbers were striking. The ASR XL had a documented 49% failure rate at six years, against a benchmark of less than 1% per year, with some studies showing revision rates of 17 to 18% within three years.⁶⁵ The Pinnacle’s revision rate was reported at 16.4%, and an estimated 10% of recipients eventually needed corrective surgery.²

What Johnson & Johnson Knew

Documents introduced during trial exposed early internal awareness of the ASR’s problems. According to reporting by the New York Times based on evidence presented in Los Angeles Superior Court in January 2013, the ASR failed an internal engineering test in 2007 that showed excessive metal debris. Complaints from surgeons had reached the company as early as 2005, the year the ASR entered the U.S. market, and consultant surgeons had abandoned the product. Executives discussed fixing the defect but apparently never did. When DePuy began phasing out the ASR in late 2009, it publicly blamed “slowing sales” rather than safety.⁷

A separate internal analysis conducted around the time of the recall reportedly predicted a 40% failure rate and a five-year lifespan, against an industry standard of 15 years. That analysis was not disclosed publicly.⁸⁹¹⁰

ASR Settlements and Current Status

More than 10,500 ASR cases were consolidated in federal court as MDL 2197 in the Northern District of Ohio, with a parallel multicounty proceeding in Bergen County, New Jersey.¹¹¹² The first ASR trial, Kransky v. DePuy Orthopaedics, ended in March 2013 with an $8.3 million compensatory verdict for the plaintiff; the jury rejected punitive damages.¹³

In November 2013, Johnson & Johnson announced a U.S. settlement program valued at roughly $2.5 billion, covering an estimated 8,000 patients who had undergone revision surgery. The typical payment for pain and suffering was about $250,000 per patient before legal fees, with added coverage for related medical costs expected to push the total near $3 billion. The deal required support from 94% of eligible claimants.¹⁴¹⁵

A second round in February 2015 added about $420 million for roughly 1,400 additional patients whose revisions occurred between August 2013 and January 2015, with amounts varying by age, medical history, and further surgeries.¹¹ A 2017 extension expanded eligibility to patients whose revisions occurred through February 2017.¹⁶ Total ASR settlement outlays have reached $2.9 billion or more.¹

As of 2026, 114 cases remain pending in the federal ASR MDL under Judge Jeffrey J. Helmick, with recent filing activity in March 2026.¹¹⁷

Pinnacle Verdicts and Settlements

The Pinnacle track looked different. There was no recall, no global settlement fund, and no consensus verdict pattern. More than 8,000 cases were consolidated as MDL 2244 in the Northern District of Texas under Judge Ed Kinkeade, and the bellwether trials produced wildly varying results:

2014: The first bellwether ended in a defense verdict.¹⁸
March 2016: A jury awarded five Texas plaintiffs $502 million, reduced to about $150 million under the Texas cap on punitive damages, then vacated by the Fifth Circuit in April 2018, which ordered a new trial after finding “inflammatory character evidence” and attorney “deceptions” over expert payments.¹⁹²⁰
December 2016: A jury awarded six California plaintiffs $1 billion, later reduced by the trial court to roughly $542 million.¹⁹
November 2017: A jury awarded six New York plaintiffs $247 million after a 31-day trial, made up of $78 million in compensatory damages and more than $168 million in punitive damages.²¹

Instead of a single fund, Johnson & Johnson negotiated confidential settlements with individual plaintiffs’ firms. By May 2019, it had resolved more than 95% of 6,000 cases involving revision-surgery patients at a total cost of about $1 billion, which included an earlier round of more than $400 million with 20 firms.²² A December 2018 court order criticized the approach, noting that DePuy’s “domino confidential settlements” left the court “without necessary information about the total or projected value of settlement.”²³

In June 2022, Judge Kinkeade closed the Pinnacle MDL, ruling it had “effectively concluded” and letting any remaining claims proceed outside the MDL.²⁴

State Attorneys General and Australian Class Action

Two other resolutions sit outside the private U.S. lawsuits but are part of the same story. In January 2019, attorneys general from 46 states reached a $120 million settlement with Johnson & Johnson and DePuy over deceptive marketing of the Pinnacle Ultamet and ASR XL. Investigators, led by Texas and South Carolina, found DePuy had marketed the Pinnacle Ultamet with a claimed 99.9% five-year survivorship rate while registry data by 2012 showed a 4.28% revision rate. The company agreed to base future marketing on current scientific and registry data, run a post-market complaint monitoring program, and review adverse-event data quarterly.²⁵²⁶

In Australia, a class action filed in February 2011 by Maurice Blackburn and Shine Lawyers settled in June 2016 for $250 million on a “no admissions” basis, covering about 1,700 ASR patients.¹⁰²⁷

Total Payout to Date

Across both device lines and both continents, settlements have topped $4 billion: roughly $2.9 billion for ASR, about $1 billion in private Pinnacle settlements, the $120 million multistate attorney general agreement, and the $250 million Australian class action.¹²² The DePuy litigation is one of the costliest medical device liability episodes on record, and it contributed to broader FDA scrutiny of the 510(k) pathway; in 2011 the agency ordered manufacturers of metal-on-metal devices then on the market to conduct post-market surveillance studies.²⁸

1
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