The Injury Lawyer Directory Blog

The US has banned the import of soft drinks with a benzene level of more than 5 parts per billion (ppb) as the substance is carcinogenic. The cause of benzene in soft drinks is the reaction between the preservative sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) at a certain temperature. As fruit juice soft drinks have been the general carrier of reactions resulting in greater than 5 ppb of benzene, US health industries have suggested to importing companies that they not add more Vitamin C to the naturally Vitamin C rich juices and use another preservation substance than sodium benzoate.

If you or someone you know has been injured by a defective product such as soft drinks containing carcinogenic benzene, please feel free to contact a personal injury lawyer such as Pomerantz, Perlberger and Lewis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Beginning in January, Johnson & Johnson has been settling lawsuits with about 30 women who have claimed to have developed blood clots as a result of the contraceptive patch Ortho Evra. In November of last year it was announced that the birth control patch may cause clots and expose women to 60% more hormones than the ordinary birth control pill. A study release February supported this evidence in stating that the patch was twice as likely to cause blood clots as the pill. Johnson & Johnson has decided that the cost of supporting cases against overwhelming evidence would be greater than a final confidential settlement. Spokeswoman Julie Keenan of the Ortho Women's Health and Urology unit, a division of J&J's Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical Inc., will not comment on the Ortho Evra lawsuits.

Johnson & Johnson has been dubbed the "anti-Merck" as their stance on litigation is dramatically different than the defective drug Vioxx manufacturer Merck & Co. The drug manufacturer Merck has been faced with over 11,500 suits without reaching a mass settlement.

If you or someone you know has been injured due to a defective product such as Ortho Evra or Vioxx, please contact a personal injury lawyer today.

According to a new report from the CALPIRG Education Fund, the FDA has sent approximately 170 enforcement letters to various drug companies concerning false or misleading advertising where important information concerning risks was often omitted, unproven uses were enforced, and other deceptive claims were made to doctors and consumers. There were over 150 drugs involved in this process, including Vioxx, Paxil, Oxycontin, and Accutane.

In the report:

• 62% of the misleading messages targeted doctors.
• 37% of messages misrepresented drugs' risks.
• 22% promoted unproven uses.
• 38% made unsupported or misleading claims.

Also, the report stated that the FDA highlighted at least 82 times in the letters that the false advertising cited clinical trials for propositions which the trials either didn't support or completely contradicted. Drug companies have been found to supress unfavorable clinical reports and raise the status of favorable ones by using PR firms.

The FDA's letters did not deter future deceptive advertising.

If you or someone you know has suffered from personal injury from a defective product or false advertising, please feel free to contact a personal injury attorney such as Marc Whitehead and Associates in Houston, Texas.

Sidney G. was admitted to a nursing home in South Florida by his loving family of two children, three grandchildren, and three great grandchildren at the age of 69. The negligent nursing home was well aware of his condition of dementia and assessed him at being "high risk" for falls. The staff still failed to provide Mr. G., along with many other patients, proper preventive fall measures such as bedside alarms and mats. While under the care of the South Florida nursing home, Mr. G. sustained 30 falls, a number that even the home couldn't deny as "excessive". Mr. G. also repeatedly entangled himself in the privacy curtain beside his bed. The Assistant Activites Coordinator deemed these repeated entanglements "dangerous or potentially dangerous", again failing to take preventive measures.

A year after being admitted to the nursing home, Mr. G. became tangled in his bedside curtain for the last time and died of mechanical asphyxia. Had simple measures to prevent such accidents, such as an alarm, many lives such as Mr. G.'s would surely have been spared.

If you or someone you know has suffered from medical negligence, please contact a personal injury lawyer.

Canadian researchers have found that the defective drug Vioxx, recalled by the FDA, can cause a heart attack as soon as two weeks after a patient has begun to take the medication. More than a fourth of 239 elderly patients studied who had taken Vioxx suffered a heart attack within six to thirteen days after taking the drug. The Vioxx producer Merck & Co. has argued countless times in previous litigation trials that short-term use of the drug does not cause heart attacks. The company has undergone three jury awards totaling $298.3 million, two of which involved short-term use of Vioxx.

The Canadian study is certain to help future Vioxx trials, according to lawyers, spokespeople and lead researchers, despite Merck attorney allegations that there is an "overwhelming weight of scientific evidence ... that there's no effect in short-term use" of Vioxx.

The Canadian study was conducted by close analysis of data from health records in Quebec, focusing on about 114,000 patients aged 66 and older who had been prescribed painkillers such as Vioxx.

The data in Pennsylvania for infections aquired through non-related hospital procedures is dramatically skewed to the Southwest, with a reported 2,054 infections in Southwest Pennsylvania and 149 infections reported in the Southeast, near the Philadelphia area.

Despite the sunny side of this report, it may also indicate that the real problem in Pennsylvania lies in the Philadelphia-area hospital system of reporting infections. "That number is certainly low and out of line with the rest of the state," according to P.J. Brennan, chief medical officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Brennan said that hospitals in the Philadelphia area "are not thinking enough about health-care-aquired infections as patient-safety issues." The reason for the lack of infection records in the area is more than likely due to fear of litigation - Philadelphia area doctors and hospitals have already suffered rising insurance costs and have become wary of reporting errors to safety authorities for fear of opening more expensive lawsuits.

Ironically, this could turn out to be a point of valid arguement in future litigations against the Philadelphia health system, as a lack of reporting could lead to a serious lack of infection elimination. The first step to elimination hospital infections is reporting them so that they can be analyzed. It has been proven that hospitals that report infections more frequently are more likely to be rid of them.

If you or someone you know has been injured by medical malpractice or hospital infections, please contact a personal injury attorney such as Pomerantz, Perlberger and Lewis of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

According to a Government and Accountability Office report released in April, the FDA does not maintain a "clear and effective process" for monitoring the safety of previously approved drugs. The report was requested in 2004 by Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Joe Barton. In the study, researchers examined the agency's handling of four controversial drugs: Baycol, Bextra, Arava, and Propulsid. It was concluded that there is a lack of listed qualifications for the determination of what safety concerns to address and when to take action. Of the four drugs observed, all but Arava were eventually taken off the market due to safety concerns, which means that the defective products were allowed to circulate among the masses freely for quite some time before their danger had been addressed.

Additionally, the report finds that while the FDA does on occasion request postmarket studies as a condition of approval, only about 25% of the drugs released to market between 1991 and 2003 had completed such studies. Many dangerous drugs are more than likely to be still flowing in the market today, based on this data.

If you or someone you know has been injured due to defective drugs, please contact a personal injury lawyer. In the Columbus, Ohio, area, contact Robert W. Kerpsack, Co, LPA.

Labels: defective pharmaceutical, defective product, FDA, Ohio, US Senate

Florida Governer Jeb Bush signed a property insurance bill Tuesday that allowed insurance companies a much less regulated reign on wind damage compensation in order to promote the survival of insurance companies in the state after the Katrina damages. While this may all be well and good for the companies, those victims left over from Katrina and the rest of the Sunshine State suffer from soaring insurance rates and an increase of cancelled policies. State Farm announced its plan to raise insurance rates throughout Florida by almost 60%, while Allstate is looking forward to dropping 174,000 policyholders entirely.

This bill will be devastating to the homeowners of Florida, despite attempts to soften the damages such as a program which gives grants to aid homeowners hurricane-proof their homes. With such a disaster-prone state, raised premium prices aren't going to be a help for the vast majority of Florida residents and those left abandoned by such insurance companies are going to be virtually out in the dark.

If you or someone you know has been injured by bad faith insurance, don't stand by and let matters sit idly. Contact a personal injury lawyer such as Hull & Zimmerman in Denver, Colorado today to schedule an appointment or answer any important questions you may have.

Carl was an honest, hard-working man, living and striving to maintain a happy family. Sacrificing a college experience to work two jobs in support of a family, he proved trustworthy to friends and invaluable to family. Besides his job as at a camera shop, he worked at a metal fabricating plant. Carl knew well the dangers of working with the hot molten metal and kept very close attention to keeping himself out of harm so as to be a constant source for his children, but he couldn't be aware of a more insidious foe: asbestos. Although companies were well aware of the dangers of the toxic material, they hid the information at the time so as to keep up a steady profit. Workers such as Carl were hindered by this deception.

Carl was recently diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare type of lung cancer, as a result of working near the asbestos for 45 years. Carl had held strong for those many years, working from 9 am to 5 pm at the camera shop, and then from 7 pm to 4 am at the metal fabricating plant, only sleeping three hours a night. His wife, Jean, is shocked and horrified at the sudden appearance of cancer, caused from such a devious carcinogen. His family waits as his last six months of life toll away.

Don't let yourself be a victim of mesothelioma due to manipulative asbestos industries. Find out more information today. If you or someone you know has been injured due to asbestos poisoning, please feel free to contact a personal injury lawyer such as Weeks, Kavanagh & Rendeiro of New Orleans, Louisiana.

In a case of workers litigation, welding industry defendants have withdrawn a major health study from evidence presented at the trial of Ernesto Solis, who had been poisoned by the toxic fumes of welding and became afflicted with a mental disease with Parkinsons' like symptoms.

The study, entitled "Employment as a Welder and Parkinson's Disease: A Study of Three Caterpillar Inc. Plants", had been presented by the defending industries as evidence that there was no solid correlation between welding fumes and neurological damages. The plaintiff's analyzation of this evidence produced support that the data had been misaligned so as to skew interpretation - data supposedly from Caterpillar welders actually came from Caterpillar fabricators, another line of workers entirely with little to no exposure to the toxic welding manganese. Don Barett, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs, stated that "the Caterpillar study is junk science at its absolute worst, and it shows how low these corporations will stoop to protect the bottom line.... At the end of the day, the welding industry defendants really had no choice but to pull this study, because it goes a long way toward proving the claims made by thousands of sick American welders. Each and every time we've been allowed to examine the data underlying a health study sponsored by the defendants, we discover that the data actually supports their claims."

If you or someone you know has been injured due to toxic welding fumes, please contact a personal injury attorney such as Jim S. Adler of Houston, Texas.

Despite California regulations stating a requirement for 30 minute lunch breaks to whomsoever works longer than six-hour shifts, Wal-Marts throughout the state have been denying their workers lunch breaks in order to promote high production at low cost to the company. This indiscreet illegal act should not go over lightly in court, according to the nearly 116,000 Wal-Mart workers fighting for their wages.

The Wal-Mart victims fought for their right to lunch - and won! They filed a class action suit against the mega-industry which won back their fair share of wages lost to overworked and unpaid hours. It was found in court that Wal-Mart had been hiding evidence of the workers' problems through official memos sent between offices. The statement made on record was that between 2001 and 2005, Wal-Mart had been purposely ignorant of the law, and was ordered to pay the financially injured workers their dues.

"Portraits of a malpractice system that is stricken with frivolous litigation are overblown," said David Studdert, leader of a team of researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. The team explored a study wherein 1,452 randomly selected U.S. lawsuits were studied in the analysis of "frivolous lawsuits". It was found that few people were capable of filing a lawsuit against a doctor frivolously, and those who did rarely recieved payment for their so called "losses" - only one in six medical malpractice cases actually recieve compensation.

Researchers found that 97% of the cases studied involved patients who had actually been injured. Of these, about a third involved cases in which the patient's injury was not clearly linked to medical negligence, a wrong prescription, or a misdiagnosis. The great majority of these claims were properly denied compensation.

The fact of the matter is that people in general will not go to the efforts of taking their problems to court unless the problems are serious. Most of the victims of medical malpractice have been devastatingly injured, or in some cases a member has actually died from a doctor's errors and the family is fighting to pay the damages caused by the person's absence. While personal injury litigations can be made easier with the right personal injury lawyer, going through the courts system is no picnic.

If you or someone you know is interested in more information concerning medical malpractice, feel free to contact a personal injury lawyer such as Jim S. Adler of Houston, Texas.

In a newly released study, Merck & Co. has provided data suggesting that patients who have stopped taking Vioxx may still be at a significantly higher risk for up to a year.

As a follow-up to their previous study, Merck tested to see whether a group of patients who had taken the perscription drug for three years would prove more likely to encounter a stroke in the following year. Of the 44 patients who suffered a stroke during this examination, 28 had been on Vioxx while 16 had been given placebos. The results given show that those who had been taking Vioxx were 1.64 more likely to suffer a stroke the following year than the group tested on placebos. After three years of studying, Vioxx patients were found to be 1.92 times as likely to undergo a stroke.

The new data is claimed to have no effect on the litigation strategy being used by Merck as a case-by-case fight against their claims, despite the 11,500 suits piling against them. Of the six cases that have gone to trial so far, Merck lost three and won three. Considering the gravity of the 20 million potential victims, consumers of the drug Vioxx during the 4.5 years of marketed release, the future is certain to look bleak for Merck & Co.

If you or someone you know has been injured due to Vioxx or any other defective product, please contact a personal injury lawyer such as:

• Robert Kerpsack of Columbus, Ohio
• Clyde Stipe of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• Michael J. O'Connor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

In a safety measure executed earlier this year, the FDA and Bristol-Myers Squibb agreed to add a warning to the label of Tequin, an antibiotic used primarily in the treatment of chronic bronchitis and other ailments, stating that it should not be used by those suffering from diabetic complications. A Canadian study released in March of 2006 found Tequin users four times more likely to become hospitalized due to low blood sugar complications and 17 times more likely to develop serious diabetes than users of other antibiotics. Bristol-Myers Squibb announced May 1st that it will no longer make and sell the dangerous product.

Between January 1, 2000, and June 30, 2005, the consumer group Public Citizen recorded 388 people who experienced dangerous blood abnormalities under the use of Tequin. Of these patients, 159 became hospitalized and 20 died. Although the manufacturer is halting all production of the product, they will not pull those examples currently existing on store shelves.

If you or someone you know has experienced difficulties from the drug Tequin, please contact a personal injury lawyer such as Jacoby and Meyers in Los Angeles, California for a consultation.

Philip Morris, major tobacco manufacturer and owner of such brand names as Marlboro and Virginia Slims has been asked once again to compensate for the incredible losses brought about by their carcinogenic products.

Last month, the Petition for a Writ of Certiorari on behalf of Phillip Morris USA Inc. was denied. The petition was requested for financial relief from impending compensation obligations in California, one of which being the death of a 57 year old man who had been a two-pack-a-day smoker, dying of cancer in 2002 from the lethal tobacco. Richard Boeken's case had originally stood to present a $3 billion punitive damage award based on the conclusion that Philip Morris was liable for fraud, misrepresentation, negligence, and the sale of a defective product. While Philip Morris claimed in their argument to the Supreme Court that the award was excessive, where some of the plaintiff's claims should have been dismissed.

If Philip Morris is trying to argue that their products aren't so bad, the statement rings false. Boeken had been smoking cigarettes since the age of 13, attempting numerous times throughout his life to quit the incredible nicotine addiction. He tried nicotine gum, specially trained classes, and even tried hypnosis, but all to no avail. He believed, based on Philip Morris' advertising, that Marlboro Lights would be safer. The cigarettes claimed to be low-tar. It was found in court that Philip Morris had been hiding critical information about the cigarettes in order to promote a "healthier" cigarette for those hopelessly addicted, while in reality the smoker was often kept in an addicted check until death.

Philip Morris currently stands against punitive damage charges totaling around $78 million, in California alone.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of manufacturer fraud or product liability, please contact a personal injury lawyer such as Clyde Stipe of Stipe Law in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma for a consultation about your damages.

Merck's Fosamax is a widely used bone building drug, a piphosphonate used to treat osteoperosis. This potentially helpful drug has been found to have a severe defect - it has been directly linked to osteonecrosis of the jaw, wherein the jaw deteriorates in a painful and disfiguring manner. Many victims of osteonecrosis of the jaw can no longer manage the consumption of solid food.

Symptoms of osteonecrosis of the jaw include:

• Loosening or loss of teeth
• Drainage of the gums
  
• Pain and swelling of the gums

One of many disadvantages of contracting the disease from Fosamax is that the victim may have stopped taking the drug for years, as traces of the drug can remain lingering in the human system long after digestion. The disease can and is generally obtained from dental trauma from dental surgery.

If you or someone you know has contracted osteonecrosis of the jaw from Fosamax or has suffered personal injury from another defective product, please feel free to contact personal injury attorneys Jacoby and Meyers of Los Angeles, California.

Wyeth, the major manufacturer and distributer of Prempro, a hormone therapy treatment intended to provide relief from hot flashes and night sweats along with prevention of osteoperosis, is now facing a plethera of lawsuits from defective qualities of the drug. The victims, now over 4,000, claim to have contracted breast cancer as a result of using the hormone therapy treatment. The lawyer representing many of the Prempro cases being presented said, "The overwhelming majority of women in these cases suffer from breast cancer as a result of their use of PRempro.... Wyeth aggressively over-promoted these drugs for conditions that [weren't approved by] the FDA. [Prempro] was truly a panacea. This drug was promoted as the fountain of youth."

The first case is assigned to the 31st of July in federal district court in Little Rock, Arkansas. Linda Reeves will be present at this time, a 67 year old woman of Benton, Arkansas who was diagnosed with breast cancer after taking Prempro for eight years for the prevention of osteoperosis. Reeves is placing the blame on Prempro for her difficult masectomy.

If you or someone you know has been injured due to a defective drug or product such as Prempro, please feel free to contact a personal injury lawyer such as Trantolo & Trantolo Attorneys at Law in Hartford, Connecticut immediately.

Oral Sodium Phosphate (OSP) products such as Fleet Phospho-soda solution, Fleet Accu-Prep solution, and Visicol tablets used for cleansing of the bowels have been identified as causes of a rare but serious form of kidney failure.

Patients who should be especially concerned about their OSP product usage are those who've had kidney or heart problems in the past, or are elderly. Dehydration is another important affecting factor with this specific kind of kidney failure - if you're having problems with dehydration, speak to your doctor about it, especially before being administered an OSP product. Other medicines have been known to be a deciding factor in OSP damages, as well as pregnancy.

If you or someone you know has been injured due to defective products such as OSP tablets, please contact a personal injury lawyer such as Siegfried and Jensen in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Teflon coating has been a popular advertising factor for many cookware industries since the invention of the miracle non-stick surface coat. Little did the public know that the amazing substance was carcinogenic and allowed for multiple respiratory hazards, as the toxic fumes rose from the heating hardware. Now over 10 million Teflon cookware users have been represented in a federal multidistrict litigation against DuPont.

The first action of this mass of individuals is aimed at Des Moines, Iowa where class certification is to hopefully be granted to the plaintiffs. 14 Des Moines class actions have already been consolidated and transferred to 12 other states. The original class action cases for the Teflon inflection were filed in California, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

If you or someone you know has been injured by Teflon coating or if you have encounted another example of product liability, please contact a personal injury lawyer such as Jim S. Adler & Associates of Dallas, Texas.

Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law Tom Baker has written a new book entitled "The Medical Malpractice Myth", intended to dissolve the myths circulating the general public regarding medical malpractice and liability insurance costs. Baker has spoken of his new book for the congressional staff, stating that "the real problem is too much medical malpractice, not too much litigation. Most people do not sue, which means that victims - not doctors, hospitals, or liability insurance companies - bear the lion's share of the costs of medical malpractice."

His new book covers many important facts concerning the false preoccupation America has with medical malpractice, some of which include:

• Medical errors and negligence kill up to 100,000 Americans a year.
• Medical malpractice insurance premiums rise and fall because of the "boom-and-bust" nature of the insurance underwriting cycle.
• Malpractice suits are rare relative to the number of people killed by medical negligence.
• There are more doctors per capita than ever before.
• The average physician paid less than $12,000 for medical malpractice insurance in 2003.
• So-called "tort reforms" have a detrimental impact on patient safety.

As time goes on, we are sure to find more and more evidence against such measures taken by doctors and insurance companies as medical malpractice caps, tort reforms, and other violations of public safety and well-being. If you would like to find more information, or have suffered from medical malpractice, please feel free to contact a personal injury lawyer such as Laurie Robbins of Robbins and Associates, PC in Atlanta, Georgia.

Bronchiolitis obliterans is a potentially fatal disease that is being spread among workers of the nation through contact with simple, everyday objects such as popcorn and candy. The disease has been linked directly to diactyl, a substance artifically manufactured as a less expensive means of enhancing flavor or mimicing the taste of butter. In popcorn plants, at least 200 have fallen sick to this exposure and three are known to have died from the lung disease now associated with food flavoring.

The disease bronchiolitis obliterans causes inflammation and often obstruction in the small airways of the lung through rapid thickening from scarring. The condition is irreversible, and progresses until the system is shut down. A lung transplant is generally required upon contracting this disease. Cases have been found in other plants such as a North Carolina potato chip plant, a Balitmore flavoring company, and a Cincinnati flavoring plant. Dr. Kathleen Kreiss, chief of the field studies branch of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health said of the cases, "Now we've got cases of bronchiolitis obliterans among works in other plants that use flavorings and in plants that make the flavorings.... We need to get into some of these plants becasue we don't have confidence that the flavoring industry has taken steps to actually prevent this disease, and we need to determine how widespread the exposure may be."

Over 150 former popcorn plant workers have sued those companies which supply or distribute food flavorings, and more than $100 million has been awarded in jury verdicts or paid in settlements. 30 suits are still pending.