When DePuy announced a product recall for their metal hip replacement implants last August, the entire American population was alarmed. Unlike any other pharmaceutical company requesting a recall for a certain type of drug, a recall for hip implants received by more than ninety thousand people cannot be remedied by simply throwing a bottle of pills to the trash.

The recall was due to the “metal on metal” hip implants’ high failure rate. DePuy’s ASR Hip Resurfacing System fails in about 12% of the recipients and the ASR XL Acetabular System fails in about 13% of patients. The worse part is, DePuy reported to have sold about 93,000 implants in the past year, which means that today, more than 11,000 people are likely to experience problems from the DePuy hip replacement devices.

If you went through a hip replacement surgery in the last two years and found out that
you received a hip replacement implant from DePuy, the logical thing to do is to contact an attorney and file a case… but not so fast.

The recall of the defective hip implants has inspired hundreds new websites intended for people who might have been affected by the products and are thinking of filing a case against DePuy. These websites appear to be sponsored or affiliated with a law firm at first glance, and that any information that the patient gives will be passed on to a lawyer for a personal case review. However, these websites are not affiliated with any law firm, and were actually created and run by a marketing company.

These websites will ask for your name, phone numbers, home address and email address plus some information about your condition or complaint, promising to give you a “free case review”. But if you thoroughly read the fine print, these websites are going to use your personal information for marketing and promotional purposes.
When you submit your personal information and your contact information, you are actually agreeing to receive “future advertisements” from the website, which in simpler terms, mean spam. If the website says your case “will be reviewed by one or more attorneys and/or law firms”, there is a huge chance that the marketing company running the website will be selling your information to as many law firms as possible.

It is understandable to have the need to seek legal help, but be very careful in giving away personal information online. Look for a specific name of a lawyer or a law firm in the website, and read the Terms and Conditions of the website. Protect yourself from being scammed.

If you need more help, you can visit the DePuy Hip Recall Lawsuit Information Web Site.