Medico-legal issues relating to metal-on-metal hip devices

Abstract

With the worldwide recall of the DePuy ASR and field safety notices about other devices, together with articles in mainstream media, there has been a significant rise in compensation claims concerning the early failure of metal-on-metal (MOM) hip replacements and hip resurfacings. Readers with a MOM revision practice are likely to have patients already bringing legal action, or considering doing so, and they might also have an interest in medico-legal reporting in these cases. However, while some solicitors have regarded such cases as simple and straightforward, the cases can be very technically demanding and complex, with numerous pitfalls along the way. This paper seeks to discuss the different types of potential legal claims that can arise from failed MOM hips and considers some of the difficult issues that can arise. Where many people wish to sue the same defendant, regarding the same issue, the Court can issue a Group Litigation Order (GLO), which determines that all similar cases be run in parallel, with a lead firm of solicitors and a steering committee dealing with the common issues. This is to prevent the waste of legal costs and potential inconsistency that could arise if many law firms were dealing with the cases separately, in different ways, in different courts. At the time of writing, there are two such Orders: one relates to the DePuy Pinnacle MOM device, and the other to the Zimmer Durom/Metasul device. It is likely that there will be others in due course. Even where there is no GLO, law firms are likely to work together on similar cases, to share the workload of the common issues and to ensure a consistency of approach. Given that this is a class of products that is believed to have performed poorly, and there are publicised settlement schemes in the USA …