A first aid kit made by Johnson & Johnson for sale on a store shelf in Westminster, Colorado April 14, 2009. (Reuters)
Johnson & Johnson and its DePuy unit were ordered by a Texas federal jury on Thursday to pay a total of about $500 million to five plaintiffs who said they were injured by Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip implants.
Following a two-month trial, jurors found that the Pinnacle hips were defectively designed, and that the companies failed to warn the public about their risks. Jurors awarded about $130 million in total compensatory damages and about $360 million in punitive damages, according to the plaintiffs' lead trial lawyer, Mark Lanier.
"There are thousands of these cases, and J&J needs to get responsible," Lanier said following the verdict, which came in the second federal trial involving the Pinnacle device.
J&J was cleared of liability in the first trial ended in 2014.
A J&J spokeswoman said the company plans to appeal the verdict.
All five plaintiffs are Texas residents who were implanted with metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip devices. They said design flaws caused the devices to fail more frequently and quickly than expected, leading to injuries including tissue death, bone erosion and high levels of metal in their blood.
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