Exactech MDL Judge Proposes Shuffling Bellwether Schedule For First Two Trial Dates

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all Exactech recall lawsuits has agreed to a joint request to change the order of early test trials slated to begin in June 2025, which will be closely watched by lawyers involved in hundreds of other claims, to help determine how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation.

The changes in the schedule were proposed in response to yet another Exactech recall announced in April 2024, impacting certain knee components at issue in two of the first four claims selected for trial. The shuffling of the bellwether schedule will provide the parties with additional time to complete discovery, without delaying the start of the first trial dates, which were scheduled before this latest recall was issued.

The litigation currently includes more than 1,600 product liability lawsuits filed against Exactech over problems linked to defective knee, hip and ankle components first pulled from the market in early 2022, due to “out-of-specification” vacuum sealed bags used with a plastic tibial insert component.

Lawsuits allege that this manufacturing problem allowed oxygen to reach the components long before they were placed in the body, which caused the implants to degrade and fail prematurely, often resulting in the need for additional surgery to remove the component only a few years later.

Former implant recipients began filing the lawsuits after the Exactech recall was first announced in February 2022, impacting more than 140,000 Optetrak, Optetrak Logic and Truliant knee replacement systems implanted in patients since 2004, as well as 15,000 components used in Exactech Vantage ankle replacements.

Similar problems had already led to a recall of Exactech Novation and Acumatch hip implants in June 2021. The Exactech hip recall was expanded in August 2022, after the manufacturer identified another 40,000 joint replacements that could fail prematurely.

Given the number of Exactech lawsuits over defective implants brought throughout the federal court system by the end of 2022, centralized pretrial proceedings were established in the federal court system before U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis in the Eastern District of New York, where the parties have selected a small group of representative claims to prepare for early bellwether trials set to begin between June 2025 and January 2026.

However, Exactech recently recalled many of its patella components in April 2024, due to the same packaging issue that led to the original recall.

Exactech Bellwether Trial Schedule Changes

According to an order issued earlier this year, first two Exactech bellwether trials were set to begin on June 2, 2025 and August 5, 2025, involving claims brought by Gayle Tarloff and Geraldine Larson, respectively. Both of these plaintiffs are from New York, and indicate they experienced problems with an Optetrak Logic knee implant, which is the product most commonly implicated in Exactech recall lawsuits.

However, plaintiffs and defendants submitted a joint letter (PDF) to the Court last week, requesting Tarloff’s case be moved to the second trial date, making the Larson lawsuit the first case to go before a jury. The parties said the move became necessary after Exactech issued the April 2024 recall, involving the patella knee component used during Tarloffs joint replacement surgery.

The new recall also impacts a claim filed by Kessler Kramer, which is slated to be the third bellwether trial in October 2025. The parties indicated the recall led to more discovery demands by plaintiffs, seeking more information on the patella recall.

“In light of this new recall, Plaintiffs have served discovery demands on defendant involving the patella and the facts leading up to the recall. Defendant has responded to the document demand, but documents are still outstanding, and the parties are meeting and conferring on this production,” the letter states. “The Parties have conferred and agree additional time is needed to complete this and other discovery in this case and prepare for trial.”

In a text-only order posted to the court’s docket on August 6, Judge Garaufis agreed to the scheduling change, changing the start of the Larson trial to June 2025, and pushing back the Tarloff trial until August 2025. Any objections to the schedule change must be filed by tomorrow.

While these claims will serve as early bellwether trials in the federal court system, the first Exactech knee lawsuit actually go before a jury at the state court level in Florida in October 2024.

Although the outcomes of these early trials will have no binding impact on other lawsuits in the litigation, they will be closely watched and may have a large impact on any Exactech recall settlements the manufacturer offers to avoid the need for hundreds of individual trials to be scheduled in the coming years.