Supreme Court Rejects Stryker’s Lawsuit Appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected Stryker, the makers of the Trident Hip Implant medical device, effort’s to get a product liability lawsuit against them thrown out of court. A plaintiff had filed a lawsuit against the company over their recalled Stryker Trident hip implant.

The announcement came earlier this week that the court refused to hear the appeal that was filed by Stryker over a lawsuit filing that occurred last December. The Supreme Court’s ruling makes it possible for the plaintiff in that case, Margaret Bausch, to keep pursuing a lawsuit she filed against Stryker amid claims that the company violated FDA regulations when they made the allegedly defective medical device. This court decision lets Bausch’s lawsuit continue on in the smaller court.

Back in 2008 in the case; Riegel v. Medtronic, the Supreme Court ruled that patients can’t sue the makers of medical devices over products that received FDA approval under the regulator’s pre-market Approval Process, which is considered the strictest approval process that a new medical device can go through before it is sold in the U.S. market. This decision applies mostly to the devices that weren’t rushed through the approval process through the 510(k) approval process.

Bausch’s complaint shows that the FDA issued Stryker a warning over the Trident Hip Replacement back in 2007, after just days before she received her Trident hip implant in 2007, the FDA issued a warning letter to Stryker that stated that the company was “violating federal regulations at its manufacturing plant in Cork, Ireland.” In that letter, the FDA said that Stryker continually ignored all of the reports that there were complications with the hip replacement device.

This may not have happened if the FDA’s approval process was more in depth in the first place and if the FDA conducted inspections of manufacturing facilities in a more timely manner, and if the investigations were conducted before the products hit the market. If you are hoping to get more information about medical device recalls, you can easily find all of the information you need in the virtual smorgasbord that is the internet, however you can spend scouring the net only to find complicated and outdated information. Let me save you some time by pointing out that I found my information on medicaldevicerecall.com it is a great resource for finding out about the newest drug recalls and drug side effects, and I check out the site regularly to remain up to date.