N.H. joins in $120 million settlement over false claims for hip transplants

CONCORD — Attorney General Gordon J. MacDonald announced that New Hampshire and 45 other attorneys general reached a $120 million consent judgment with Johnson & Johnson and DePuy to resolve allegations that DePuy unlawfully promoted its metal-on-metal hip implant devices, the ASR XL and the Pinnacle Ultamet. Under the settlement, New Hampshire will receive $1,409,957.77.

The attorneys general allege that DePuy engaged in unfair and deceptive practices in its promotion of the ASR XL and Pinnacle Ultamet hip implant devices by making misleading claims as to the longevity, also known as survivorship, of metal-on-metal hip implants. DePuy advertised that the ASR XL hip implant had a survivorship of 99.2 percent at three years when the National Joint Registry of England and Wales reported a 7 percent revision rate at three years. Similarly, DePuy promoted the Pinnacle Ultamet as having a survivorship of both 99.8 percent and 99.9 percent at five years when the National Joint Registry of England and Wales reported a 2.2 percent 3-year-revision rate in 2009 increasing to a 4.28 percent five-year-revision rate in 2012. Simply stated: DePuy was advertising that its hip implants had higher longevity rates for patients than surveys show they actually did.