Americans who trusted DePuy Orthopaedics with their hip surgery have learned the hard way that the medical device manufacturer did not deserve such trust. Instead, DePuy knowingly sold 93,000 hip replacement surgery devices worldwide, and 37,000 in America, of which about 12 per cent were doomed to fail.

Such hip implants were supposed to perform as replacement hips for 15 years before possibly needing replacement via further surgery. However, about one in eight persons given the device has suffered intense pain within the first five years of surgery -- and sometimes soon after hip replacement surgery.

In fact, a woman in Hawaii, Jaqueline Lum, says she began having such pain about three months after having the surgery in 2009. Lum, 51, is now suing DePuy in federal court.

She told the Honolulu Star Advertiser that her hip replacement surgery pain is “really bad. I can stand up, sit up on a chair, (but) it hurts. (To) sleep at night I need to take medications to help take the pain away.,"

And why? Because DePuy sold a defective product in the name of profits. In fact, officials in Australia had complained of the product’s defects three years ago.

DePuy finally removed it from the market in Australia last year, but continued selling it in America until the summer of 2010.

In America, after lawsuits began to mount, DePuy belatedly recalled its ASR Hip Systems from the U.S. market.

Of course, how can it “recall” a metal ball-and-socket joint that’s been placed in someone’s body? DePuy is attempting to do so in order to avoid lawsuits which will cost it more money than the cost of revision surgery to replace its recalled products.

The DePuy hip device has failed because it erodes and wears prematurely, leaving microscopic  chromium and cobalt debris that harms adjacent tissue and bones. This can cause victims severe pain, necessitating corrective or revision surgery.

Persons who have received hip replacement surgery and then experienced pain within five years are advised to consult their surgeon to determine if they had a DePuy device implanted. Or, a personal injury lawyer can help them make this determination.

If this proves to be the case, they should alert a defective medical device lawyer or attorney to explore their legal options in a possible hip replacement lawsuit.

Victims of the defective medical device known as an ASR Hip System are urged to steer clear of contacting the hip replacement device’s manufacturer, DePuy Orthopaedics. The company has been known to record conversations of victims and use the tapes against them in claiming that victims were responsible for their own hip implant injuries.

Instead, victims should let a personal injury lawyer contact DePuy on their behalf.

When DePuy recently recalled 37,000 hip replacement devices sold in America, it sent letters to the persons who received them promising that it had set up a “help line” just for them.

Instead, this “help line” has proven to be a ploy for getting victims to make statements by phone which DePuy records on tape and later uses against them, pinning blame for their pain on “carlessness” of the victims themselves.

The “help line” is managed by Broadspire, an insurance adjuster firm whose mission is to reduce payments to persons injured by hip replacement surgery.

Indeed, DePuy recently used such taped conversations to assert in a California Superior Court that its hip implant victims were “negligent, careless and at fault and conducted themselves so as to contribute substantially to their alleged injuries and damages."

A personal injury attorney can refute this claim and support victims’ legal right to financial compensation for the injuries that DePuy’s defective product has produced. Via a hip replacement lawsuit, victims can put the blame where it belongs: on a manufacturer whose failures have been proven to the point that it has removed its failed product from the marketplace.

DePuy Orthopaedics, whose failed hip replacement device has harmed thousands of Americans, is known as the first commercial orthopaedics company in America. Founded in 1895 in Warsaw, Ind., it first designed and built fiber splints to substitute for the wooden barrel staves which had been used to set broken bones.

Today DePuy produces far more sophisticated products -- but complex products which also can fail. Among them is it hip replacement surgery implant: a metal ball-and-socket joint that takes the place of a human hip.

This device has caused intense pain to many Americans by virtue of its premature erosion. Microscopic particles of cobalt and chromium enter the body and do damage to nearby bones and tissue. Victims are known to have dozens of times more cobalt and chromium in their body than normal levels.

Such victims then need further surgery, or revision surgery, far sooner than the 15 years which DePuy first projected for its hip implant devices. In fact, some victims experience intense pain soon after the initial surgery.

But are they victims of DePuy, or of giant corporation Johnson & Johnson?

After more than 100 years of history, DePuy was purchased by Johnson & Johnson in 1998. Depuy is now a part of a monolithic, worldwide purveyor of medical devices and pharmaceuticals. In fact, DePuy’s hip replacement implants were introduced in 2003, five years after the Johnson & Johnson purchase.

For its part, Johnson & Johnson is known for a wide variety and large number of lawsuits, recalls and investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice when its products fail. One such product has been the hip implant devices known as ASR Hip Systems, which were sold under the name DePuy.

DePuy and Johnson & Johnson now are reaping what they sow, as targets of defective medical device lawsuits on behalf of innocent patients who were harmed by a hip replacement surgery implant.

Such hip implant devices were sold for profit in America for seven long years. But on Aug. 24, 2010, DePuy finally announced a “recall” of its failed devices. This hip replacement recall involves thousands of Americans who received the defective product during hip replacement surgery.

Victims now have a recourse besides allowing DePuy to “recall” their hip implant via corrective surgery. Instead, they can seek the financial recovery to which they are legally entitled via a hip surgery lawsuit or hip implant injuries lawsuit.

Persons who received a hip replacement since 2003 and believe it was the DePuy device should alert a defective medical device attorney or lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates to explore their legal options.

Persons who have suffered hip implant pain after hip replacement surgery may tend to explore their options first via the manufacturer of their implant. They should not.

Rather, victims are advised to alert a defective products lawyer or attorney before proceeding further. Otherwise, they may call a DePuy Orthopaedics “help line” which really is a means for the manufacturer to record conversations and place the blame on victims.

Or they may come across a DePuy “PPC” or pay-per-click ad in a Google search which only takes them to a self-serving website of the failed manufacturer.

That website itself advises victims to call DePuy “help line.” Yet this line is known to be managed by an insurance adjuster whose job is to reduce payments to injured persons. It’s also suspected that this adjuster records the calls of victims in order to use their own statements against them and assert that their pain is the fault of the victims, not DePuy and its defective product.

The website also claims that DePuy “makes patient safety and health a top priority and is continually evaluating data about its products.” If that were so, why did it DePuy wait years after its hip replacement device was found to be defective to remove it from the market? Instead, DePuy continued selling the device for profits, while Americans and others worldwide suffered.

Indeed, the product was found defective in Australia in 2007, but not recalled from that market until 2009.

In short, victims are best advised not to allow the failed product’s manufacturer to direct them after suffering hip replacement surgery pain. Instead, they can alert a defective medical devices attorney or lawyer to explore their legal rights for a hip replacement surgery lawsuit.

Jim S. Adler & Associates, a veteran personal injury law firm, supports victims’ rights, not those of the faulty manufacturers who have harmed them. Jim S. Adler & Associates is the place to call, via 1-800-505-1414, or to contact by Internet via the free case evaluation form on this Web page.