The president of DePuy Orthopaedics said in a testimony last week that the company’s faulty ASR XL device was recalled because it wasn’t meeting “clinical expectations.” The statement came during the Chicago trial of Carol Strum, who is suing DePuy for damages from her defective ASR device.
“The revision rate was not acceptable,” Ekdahl said. However, the evidence shows that DePuy understood the device was defective long before they withdrew it from the market. Ekdahl was questioned about a DePuy document that was signed by company executives days before the recall.
The document listed three possible reasons for the recall, including the ASR being a “defective product that would affect product performance and/or could cause health problems.” In his opening statement, DePuy’s attorney, Richard Sarver, stated, “We absolutely didn’t say the product is a defective product.” To say the recall “is an admission of a defect, it is absolutely absurd,” he added.
Alisha Mims is a writer and researcher for Ring of Fire.
