In August of 2010, Johnson & Johnson recalled 93,000 ASR hip implants after internal documents revealed that 37% of ASR hips failed after 4.6 years. Yesterday, attorneys for Johnson & Johnson told District Judge David Katz that they’ve agreed to pay $2.47 billion in order to settle the thousands of lawsuits brought due to its recalled DePuy hip implants. Some say that this number may go as high as $4 billion.

This agreement would settle about 8,000 current lawsuits filed in the U.S. against Johnson & Johnson, with an average of ~$250,000 for each surgery, plus medical costs. While it does provide compensation to victims without further delay, the victims are also giving up the potential for a larger judgement by settling instead of litigating.

The wild thing is that this is the 2nd multi-billion-dollar settlement by Johnson & Johnson in the past month! On November 4th, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $2.2 billion to resolve criminal & civil probes into the marketing of Risperdal and other medication.