In re Stryker Rejuvenate and ABG II Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation Lawsuit

In re Stryker Rejuvenate and ABG II Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation

Product and manufacturer

Stryker Corporation is an American medical technology company based in Portage, Michigan. It descends from The Orthopedic Frame Company, founded in 1941 by the orthopedic surgeon Homer Stryker as a maker of patient-positioning and traction equipment; the firm took the Stryker Corporation name in 1964 and later built a major orthopedic implant business. Its orthopedic division today sells implants for total joint replacement of the hip, knee, and shoulder. The products at issue in this litigation were two total hip systems: the Rejuvenate and the ABG II. Both were modular, metal-on-metal designs, meaning the ball that articulates against the socket cup is made of metal rather than a ceramic or plastic pairing. That construction choice was marketed for its wear characteristics, but it is also what connected the two systems, in patients' bodies, to the failure pattern described below.

Alleged harm

The clinical problem in these cases is metallosis. When a metal-on-metal hip articulation wears, the metal debris it sheds accumulates in the soft tissue around the implant. Patients in the litigation alleged that the Rejuvenate and ABG II stems produced exactly this: progressive pain, swelling, and loss of function months or years after the original operation, along with tissue damage, fluid collections, and in serious cases bone loss. Many of the affected patients required a revision operation to remove the failing prosthesis and replace it. The harm allegations thus combined the original surgical injury with a second, unplanned surgery to correct the implant's failure. In 2012, Stryker recalled the Rejuvenate and ABG II hip stems. The company's history with regulators is relevant context: FDA warning letters in 2007 and 2008 had already cited quality problems at its facilities, including poor fixation of hip implant components at its New Jersey plant, and in 2012 the FDA itself issued a warning concerning the Rejuvenate system.

Litigation

The federal cases were centralized as Multi-District Litigation No. 2441, docket 13-md-2441, in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, before Senior Judge Donovan W. Frank. Centralization gathered the product-liability claims from across the country into one court for coordinated discovery and pretrial management, the standard mechanism for large implant-failure case groups.

Outcome

The litigation resolved around a private, court-supervised settlement rather than a series of published verdicts. On November 3, 2014 the court approved a private Master Settlement Agreement covering the consolidated cases, which the docket data records as the settlement outcome of 2014. A qualified settlement fund was established in July 2015 to administer claims under that program, and the court later applied an expanded settlement agreement dated December 19, 2016. As of 2026 the MDL remains open, with individual cases being resolved through the private global settlement program. The MDL remains formally open for residual matters. No financial terms are stated in this entry.

This is an archived encyclopedia record; intake for new claims is closed and the entry is provided for historical reference only.