Rouviere v. Depuy Orthopaedics, Inc.
- Gregory Woods
- 1:18-cv-04814
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 11
In Rouviere v. Depuy Orthopaedics, Inc., Magistrate Judge Aaron partly granted DePuy’s motion limiting the topics for Plaintiffs’ corporate deposition.
The ruling affects the plaintiffs’ ability to question DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc.’s corporate representative and defines the discovery topics on which DePuy must provide testimony.
What happened
Rouviere v. Depuy Orthopaedics, Inc. is a medical-device injury lawsuit involving Jodi Rouviere’s allegedly defective hip implant. The plaintiffs sought testimony from DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. through a corporate representative about 30 topics.
DePuy asked the court to limit or strike many topics because they were duplicative, too broad, irrelevant, burdensome, or sought information DePuy did not possess. The plaintiffs defended the topics, but agreed to withdraw one because it duplicated another.
Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron granted DePuy’s protective-order motion in part and denied it in part. Judge Aaron required testimony on 12 narrowed topics concerning the DePuy Summit Stem, including warnings, marketing, recalls, performance, reactions, coatings, regulatory approval, failure rates, design history, compatibility, and testing, while striking or replacing other topics.
The detailed version
- Rouviere v. Depuy Orthopaedics, Inc. · No. 1:18-cv-04814
- Gregory Woods
- June 3, 2020
Background
This is a medical-device product-liability case concerning injuries allegedly sustained by Jodi Rouviere after receiving a hip implant. The plaintiffs allege that components manufactured by DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. and Howmedica Osteonics Corp. were defective in their manufacture, warnings, and design. The DePuy component was the Summit Tapered Hip System Stem, which the opinion calls the DePuy Summit Stem.
The plaintiffs served a deposition notice seeking testimony from a DePuy corporate representative on 30 categories. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6), an organization must designate one or more people to testify about information known or reasonably available to it. The court explained that DePuy had to make a good-faith effort to identify and prepare knowledgeable witnesses, but those witnesses did not have to be the people with the most knowledge of each subject. The deposition topics also had to be relevant, proportional to the needs of the case, not unduly burdensome or duplicative, and described with reasonable particularity.
Ruling
The court granted in part and denied in part DePuy’s motion for a protective order under Rule 26(c). A protective order can limit discovery when there is good cause, including to prevent undue burden or expense. The court replaced or narrowed several groups of proposed topics and struck others.
The court ordered DePuy to provide testimony on these 12 topics:
- Written materials or warnings accompanying the DePuy Summit Stem, including instructions for use, from 2010 through
- 2. The product’s packaging, labeling, and marketing from 2010 through
- 3. Recalls involving the DePuy Summit Stem.
- The product’s performance history, including reports of defects, failures, or other adverse events.
- Intended, permitted, or foreseeable use of the stem within other hip systems, devices, or components, including products made by other manufacturers.
- Reactions caused by use of or corrosion involving the stem, including hypersensitivity, foreign-body reactions, metal toxicity, and allergic reactions.
- Coatings used or considered for use on the stem.
- The stem’s regulatory application and approval process under the federal 510(k) process.
- Failure rates associated with the stem.
- The stem’s Design History File and the information it contains.
- Use of the stem with components designed, manufactured, or sold by other medical-device manufacturers.
- Testing or analyses performed on the stem.
The court found that several groups of proposed topics were duplicative and replaced them with narrower topics focused on the DePuy Summit Stem rather than broader categories concerning other products. The court ruled that the plaintiffs could not ask about DePuy’s Pinnacle products because those products were not at issue in the case. The court also found that possible carcinogenicity of the DePuy product was not relevant or proportional because the plaintiffs did not allege that the product caused cancer.
The court struck proposed topics concerning a 2008 DePuy sales campaign, communications involving two doctors, health concerns about metal-on-metal implants, comparisons among different types of hip implants, alleged improper payments or influence involving doctors, and governmental or other actions concerning alleged improper business dealings. The court found these topics overbroad, insufficiently limited, not reasonably particular, or not proportional to the needs of this product-liability case. It also struck a topic seeking information about defenses because it was not reasonably particular and, to the extent it sought legal strategy or opinions, implicated work-product protection. The court struck topics seeking materials provided directly to patients and the Medical Device Master File after accepting DePuy’s counsel’s representations that DePuy did not possess the requested information. Finally, it struck two other topics as confusing, redundant, or insufficiently particular.
The opinion states that the motion was granted in part and denied in part; it does not state that the case itself was dismissed or resolve the parties’ product-liability claims.
Read the full 11-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.