The accord will resolve more than 7,500 suits filed in federal and state courts against J&J’s DePuy unit by patients who’ve already had defective hips removed, said the people, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the settlement.

The company will pay an average of $300,000 for each of those removals, they said. The agreement doesn’t bar patients whose hips fail in the future from seeking compensation from J&J, the people said. That means the settlement is uncapped in terms of its total value, they added. The settlement is to be announced next week.

The agreement “resolves a lot of litigation that could have dragged on for years and cost J&J much more money in the long run,” said Carl Tobias, who teaches product-liability law at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

Lawyers for patients claim debris created by the artificial hip’s metal ball sliding against a metal cup can cause tissue death around the joint and may increase the amount of metal ions in the bloodstream to harmful levels.

The settlement follows J&J’s agreement, announced Nov. 4, to pay $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil probes into the marketing of Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug, and other medicines.

Dwarfed Accord

The hip pact dwarfs a 2001 accord Sulzer AG reached with patients who claimed that company’s hip and knee implants were defective. Sulzer, a Winterthur, Switzerland-based pump maker, agreed to pay $1 billion to resolve those suits, then the largest settlement involving hip implants.

J&J’s DePuy unit recalled 93,000 implants in 2010, including 37,000 in the U.S., after more than 12 percent failed within five years. That rate is climbing, along with lawsuits by patients blaming the chromium and cobalt devices for pain, metal debris and replacement surgeries.

Lorie Gawreluk, a spokeswoman for DePuy, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment on the accord. J&J, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, has spent about $993 million on medical costs and informing patients and surgeons about the recall, Gawreluk said in an e-mail earlier this year.

J&J set aside an undisclosed amount for litigation, which it increased before June 30, she said.