Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $1B for faulty hip replacements

Johnson & Johnson was ordered by a Texas jury to pay more than $1 billion to a group of plaintiffs over artificial hip replacements. Officials of J&J’s DePuy unit, which produces the hip replacements, knew the hip replacements were faulty but failed to warn doctors. The company now faces more than 9,000 lawsuits accusing them of mishandling the metal hips. The verdict includes more than $30 million in actual damages for the six plaintiffs and more than $1 billion in punitive damages, according to court filings. The company stopped selling the devices in 2013 after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration toughened artificial-hip regulations.