Stryker Hip Lawsuits Move Forward, As New Jersey Court Overseeing LFIT V40 Femoral Head Claims Preps for First Conference

Published on June 13, 2017 by Sandy Liebhard

Stryker hip replacement lawsuits involving allegedly defective LFIT CoCr V40 Femoral Heads are beginning to move forward in New Jersey’s Bergen County Superior Court. According to an Order dated June 2^nd, the Court is scheduled to convene an Initial Case Management Conference on Wednesday, June 21^st, at 10:00 a.m.

Conference Agenda

In May, the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed to centralize all LFIT V40 femoral head claims filed in the state’s courts before a single judge in Bergen County. All currently pending Stryker hip lawsuits, as well as any filed in the future, were ordered transferred to the multicounty litigation for the purposes of coordinated case management.

According to an agenda included with the June 2^nd Order, the litigation’s first conference will address the following:

• Status of Discovery
• Status of Motions
• Status of Settlement/Mediation Efforts
• Organization of Counsel
• Coordination with federal MDL

“Before the conference, counsel shall meet and confer — in person, by telephone conference, or by video conference — and seek consensus to the extent possible with respect to the items on the agenda, including a proposed discovery plan and a suggested schedule for joinder of parties, amendment of pleadings, motions, and trial,” the Order states.

Stryker Hip Recall

Stryker’s LFIT Anatomic CoCr V40 Femoral Heads are constructed from a chromium/cobalt alloy, and are intended to be used with several of the company’s modular hip devices, including:

• Accolade TMZF
• Accolade 2 Stems
• Meridian Stems
• Citation Stems

Certain LFIT V40 femoral heads were the subject of an “Urgent Medical Device Recall Notification” issued by Stryker in August 2016, which warned that the components had been associated with a “higher than expected number of complaints involving taper lock failure.”  Taper lock failure can result in numerous debilitating complications that may result in hip replacement failure and the need for revision surgery.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) designated Stryker’s action a Class II recall, which indicates that the affected devices could cause temporary or medically reversible health effects. While Stryker has advised doctors to monitor hip recipients for problems possibly related to the LFIT V40 Femoral Head recall, the notification did not seek return of the affected devices or direct surgeons to notify patients of the action.

Although many of the Stryker hip lawsuits included in the multicounty litigation do involve recalled LFIT V40 femoral heads, it should be noted that cases involving non-recalled lot numbers are also eligible for inclusion in the proceeding.