Suits Target J&J Discs

Dane Titsworth had spent months in agony when he first saw the television advertisement for patients suffering from failed disc-replacement surgery.

Feeling desperate, Titsworth called the telephone number on the screen. He heard back from a Chicago-area law firm within days.

Pete Flowers, a partner at that firm, counts Titsworth among "several hundred" clients who are suing Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) over problems with the company's Charite artificial discs.

Flowers has formally filed a handful of cases already and plans to keep on adding more. He portrays the damages involved as "extremely substantial."

Charite discs, introduced to the U.S. market with much fanfare less than two years ago, are meant to last a lifetime. But they can require life-threatening revision surgeries when they fail. And Flowers feels that they fail far too often.

"Most of these people are between 25 and 45 years old," he says of his clients. "A lot of them have lost their jobs, their spouses, their families, their houses -- everything."

For its part, Johnson & Johnson's orthopedic device unit, DePuy, continues to stand behind the Charite, saying that it enjoyed very high satisfaction scores among patients who received it during clinical trials and that failure rates have been "trending lower" since its approval. Meanwhile, the company says that it carefully evaluates any complaints about the disc that come to its attention.

The Charite lawsuits come as orthopedic device makers scramble for new ways to grow -- and attract some criticism in the process. The companies have been accused of developing new devices that seem like gimmicks at best -- and health threats at worst -- as they seek to reignite their once-highflying stocks.

Today, TheStreet.com presents a three-part series that takes a closer look at some of the industry's latest offerings.

Natural Motion

Even Johnson & Johnson itself has expressed some disappointment with the Charite's domestic launch. In late 2004, the company seemed poised to capitalize on a new opportunity by offering the first-ever artificial disc approved for use in the U.S. market. The company quickly won over patients who were sometimes otherwise faced with spinal fusion by promising that "natural motion is back" through use of the new Charite disc being marketed by its DePuy Spine division.