Zimmer Durom Cup Lawsuits are Pending
In 2006 Zimmer Durom Cup Hip Implants were approved for use in the United States. Within less than 2 years, more than 12,000 patients were functioning using a Durom Cup as a replacement device for a defective hip joint. Although these implants had been used for 3 years in Europe prior to being approved in the U.S. and had exhibited a high rate of success, in the U.S. patients started developing problems, some almost immediately after surgery. Their doctors, looking for reasons why the implants failed, decided that the Durom Cup was a defective device.
Patients who suffer from the use of defective prosthetic devices are protected by law in most U.S. states. These laws entitle a patient who experienced pain, incurred medical expenses, or lost wages due to a defect in a medical device to receive compensation for their losses. Zimmer has not yet conceded that their product is defective because of its success rate in the European market, but in order to give itself time to develop a better training program for American surgeons, Zimmer voluntarily pulled the cup from the American market in July, 2008.
If you perform a search on the Internet for “Zimmer Durom Cup Lawsuits”, you will find a host of attorneys who are looking to help file lawsuits against Zimmer on behalf of patients. As the number of cases of implant failures continues to grow, these attorneys have done their research and believe that they can file successful individual or class action lawsuits against the manufacturer.
Physicians who have already performed exploratory surgeries to determine the cause of their patients’ problems have discovered that many of the cups have loosened a great deal over time. In fact, one doctor reported that he found a cup that had loosened so much that it popped from its socket when he touched it. In other patients surgeons have found that the device has actually migrated a short distance within the body. Zimmer cites the success of the cup in Europe as basis for its belief that there is nothing defective about the device, but physicians believe that almost 6% of all Durom Cups will fail and need revision surgery within the next couple of years.
Zimmer stockholders take the position that Zimmer should have announced a suspension of U.S. sales before January 22, 2008 instead of waiting until July. Because of this belief, they have filed a class action lawsuit in Indiana requesting damages for those investors who purchased stock between January 22 and July, 2008 when the product was finally pulled from the market.
Zimmer still pleads its case that its Durom Cup is not to blame for the surgical failures in the United States. Instead they contend that physicians did not receive adequate training for doing the procedure. Even so, in October, 2008, Zimmer announced that it had reserved $47.5 million to pay claims won in lawsuits against it. In July it was shown that the failure rate of cup implants could be as high as 5.7%. Zimmer states that this money is not being reserved for all patients and revisions but only for “revisions associated with surgeries that predate the company’s voluntary suspension and which also occur within two years of the original surgery date.” The resolution of this problem remains to be seen.