REUTERS: A U.S. judge almost halved the award in a December jury verdict that ordered Johnson & Johnson and its DePuy Orthopaedics unit to pay more than $1 billion to plaintiffs in six lawsuits who said they were injured by DePuy’s Pinnacle hip implants.
U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade in Dallas cited “constitutional considerations” that limit how much plaintiffs may recover in punitive damages but upheld the jury’s findings that the implants were defectively designed and that the companies failed to warn consumers about the risks.
Around $500 million of punitive damages would be cut from the more than $1 billion awarded to the plaintiffs who are California residents that were implanted with the hip devices and experienced tissue death, bone erosion and other injuries they attributed to design flaws.
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