A court ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $247 million Thursday to six patients who claimed the company concealed defects in its Pinnacle artificial hips — marking the third multimillion dollar loss over the products, according to Bloomberg.
In the lawsuit, lawyers argued J&J's DePuy unit, which manufactures the hips, knew the devices had defects but didn't properly warn physicians and patients about the risk they would prematurely fail.
The jury granted the six patients whose hips had to be surgically removed $79 million in damages and $168 million in punitive damages.
Over the past year, 9,900 lawsuits were filed against J&J and the DePuy unit over the artificial hips, according to the report.
This is the third significant-dollar loss in court over the products. In 2016, a Dallas jury ordered J&J to pay $502 million to five patients over the hips, a judge later slashed the amount owed to $150 million. Earlier this year another jury ordered J&J to pay more than $1 billion to six California residents whose artificial hips failed. That settlement was later cut nearly in half.
J&J stopped selling the Pinnacle hips in 2013 after the FDA imposed tighter regulations for artificial hips.
J&J officials "remain committed to the long-term defense of the allegations in these lawsuits," Stella Meirelles, a spokeswoman for DePuy, told Bloomberg.