The Injury Lawyer Blog

A family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been awarded $5 million for the death of their infant, Marquis Dunson in March, 2002, twelve days after his first birthday. The Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office declared the official cause of death as acetaminophen toxicity. The overdose of the toxic drug was due to an unawareness of the parents when using Infant's Tylenol. Lisa and Martin Dunson had no idea that Infant's Tylenol was a concentrated dose; three times the strength of a regular Children's Tylenol. Their lack of understanding could hardly be penalized - their doctor had recommended the Infant's Tylenol. As Marquis kept getting sicker, he had more Infant's Tylenol administered to him. Nobody suspected the Infant's Tylenol to be at fault, after all, it had worked well with their other four children.

Both the negligent doctor and the drug manufacturer can be associated with this tragedy. As a result of the lawsuit presented by the Dunsons, stronger warnings and a clear notation of the Infant's Tylenol potential toxicity has been placed on the McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals product. This company and product has been under fire in the past.

If you or someone you know is concerned with dangerous drugs or has a personal injury case to present, please feel free to contact an injury lawyer in your area such as Pomerantz, Perlberger and Lewis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In a recent editorial release from the New York Times the reliability of certain medical journals was analyzed and found grotesquely false in many cases, with a couple glaring examples from the Journal of the American Medical Association and Neuropsychopharmacology, a lesser known medical journal. In the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), antidepressant drugs were promoted as extremely beneficial, warning pregnant women that withdrawal from antidepressant medication would significantly increase chances of slipping back into depression. These statements lack foundation when it is taken into consideration that most of the 13 authors involved in the journal had been paid as consultants or lecturers by antidepressant manufacturers. Their financial obligations were left unmentioned in their consultations with JAMA because allegedly they were deemed "irrelevant". With bias in the media, important medical information may be neglected to the public resulting in false representation of a bad product or dangerous procedure.

The same example applied to Neuropsychopharmacology, wherein eight of the nine authors advocating a controversial new treatment to therapy-resistant clinical depression were on the payroll of the company producing the product advertised. The ninth author worked directly for the company. The lead author of the depression study is the journal's editor and a consultant to the product company, holding a history of accusations concerning financially tied product and therapy promotion.

The New York Times editorial argues the fallibility of these journals in both their allowance of such baised authors to promote false standards and in the lack of association between the authors and their employers. The article pushes for journals that promote authors free of conflict for more credible information.

You can find the editorial on conflicted medical journals here, at www.nytimes.com.

If you're looking for more reliable information on health hazards and dangerous drugs, feel free to contact a personal injury attorney specializing in dangerous procedures and pharmaceutical injuries such as Pomerantz, Perlberger and Lewis of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Ms. Peggy McGinnis of Alton, Georgia claims to have been bitten on May 2, 2006 by her neighbor's pit bull while she was out for a jog. Ms. McGinnis had been minding her own business on the other side of the street when the dog charged out of its own yard, raced after her across the street and bit her in the ankle. She suffered severe laceration and puncture wounds to her left leg and ankle, as well as requiring hospitalization for infection treatment.

The dog owner, Susan Gomer, is charged by Ms. McGinnis for not having the dog equipped with the required leash and license according to Alton City Code. She also claims the suffer pain, scarring and disfigurement, and lost wages for the time she spent healing her injuries. She is seeking damages in excess of $50,000.

If you or someone you know has been bitten by a dangerous animal, please feel free to contact a personal injury attorney specializing in dog bite cases such as Best and Anderson of Orlando, Florida.

Ms. Benetta Buell-Wilson of San Diego, California was awarded $82.6 million in personal injury damages from Ford after a crash in 2002. She had swerved to avoid a metal object and lost control of the 1997 Explorer she was driving, causing it to roll four and a half times. Ms. Buell-Wilson was paralyzed when the roof collapsed on her neck, severing her spine. The award was one of the biggest personal injury awards ever filed against an automaker, and the first damage against Ford involving the rollover of an Explorer.

Based on a publication of the Los Angeles Times, there has been a recent "explosion" of lawsuits dealing exlusively with product liability. According to research from Thomson West, plaintiffs have filed over 71,000 product liability suits since 2001 in federal courts, and then "untold others" in state courts. Prescription drug lawsuits currently account for over one-third of product liability lawsuits filed in federal courts. The reason for this increase in lawsuits may largely be a result of pharmaceutical industries' newer marketing technique of advertising directly to the consumer the benefits of each product while neglecting the dangerous side effects. According to the Los Angeles Times, the rise in pharmaceutical injury lawsuits is due to "fundamental changes in the pharmaceutical industry's business practices intended to boose sales and profits."

If you or someone you know would like more information about pharmaceutical injury law, please feel free to contact a personal injury attorney such as Jacoby and Meyers of Los Angeles, California.

A total of 17 new lawsuits were filed on July 14th, 2006 in the New York State Supreme Court. The suits were from California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. Pfizer's Lipitor has successfully become the best-selling drug in the world with its effective marketing scheme, with sales over $15 billion in 2005 alone. The cholesterol-reducing drug Lipitor has marketed itself as a safe, effective drug when in reality it has damaged numerous people with serious problems such as nerve damage and memory loss. These dangerous side effects were not mentioned in the advertisement and distribution of Lipitor, placing the manufacturer Pfizer at fault.

One of the victims of the defective drug was Mr. Dennis Hickie, 52, a former professional soccer player in the U.K. and current vice president of a publicly-traded company. He currently resides in Long Island, New York. After suffering high cholesterol for years, Mr. Hickie started taking Lipitor to better his health. According to Mr. Hickie, "The neuropathy and myopathy caused by the lengthy exposure to Lipitor has created such damage in my hands, elbows, shoulders, knees and ankles that exercise is excruciatingly painful and impossible to carry out... In reality, I have little strength for anything above opening an envelope... As an ex-professional athelete, there is nothing more soul destroying than NOT being able to enjoy all the benefits of being in peak physical and mental condition."

Lydia Fish, widow to the late U.S. congressman Hamilton Fish of New York, also suffers from side effects of Lipitor. A Port Jervis, New Jersey resident, she is a former political activist who once ran for public office. She started taking Lipitor in 1999 to help with her cholesterol. She has since suffered irreversible medical complications such as peripheral system damage, short-term memory loss and depression. Even after discontinuing the medication, forgetfulness, bad balance, and alteration of sensation in her extremeties continues to plague her. Doctors eventually diagnosed her with cerebral atrophy, with no evidence suggesting dementia from Alzheimer's disease. Jennifer Beykirch, Ms. Fish's oldest daughter, says that she is "100 percent confident that Lipitor has caused my mother's significant memory loss and has totally debilitated her.... Before taking the drug she was vibrant and always active, but she doesn't have a life anymore. Sadly, it took us a long time to connect the dots, during which time she has taken numerous other medications to try and correct her dysfunction. But we have no doubt as to the source of her decline: Lipitor has ruined her life."

The victim list continues to include many more of these tragic stories, including a professional airline pilot in Virginia who claims the damages he has contracted from Lipitor use have disabled him for flight services. He begun taking the statin to lower his cholesterol, in order to pass an employment physical for the airline industry.

Mervyn Winter had worked at an ice cream factory for years, from 1951 to 1978, never realizing that he was contracting mesothelioma. He had been a night shift overseer at an old ice cream factory called Amscol where his nightly assignment of stirring the milk vats brought him up a flight of stairs and past some pipes that Mr. Winter reported brushing against regularly. His lawyer's investigation found that every when those pipes were shifted, asbestos fibers and dust were released into the air, easily inhalable by Mr. Winter. There had also been reports of asbestos in the roof sheeting and in the maintenance workshop at Amscol.

Mr. Winter died on the 6th of July, 2006, just a year after recieving compensation. According to Mr. Winter's family, the 83-year-old man hadn't been concerned with the compensation money - he went to courts to bring the effects of asbestos from his workplace into light and to figure out exactly what had happened to him.

If you or someone you know has contracted mesothelioma as a result of asbestos exposure, please feel free to contact a personal injury attorney specializing in mesothelioma cases such as Heard, Robins, Cloud and Lubel, LLP, of Houston, Texas.

Early this year, the Bush administraton released a "Pandemic Influenza Plan" with the hopes of deterring potential victims away from the reality of a viral flu which has been an issue in this nation for several years. The fact of the issue is that the plan has no comprehensive strategy for protecting those workers who stand at great risk for contracting an influenza. Those who are most at risk are those working to save and protect the public from the virus, such as health care workers, firefighters, police officers, and emergency service workers.

When a viral epidemic becomes an emergency, these first-line responders will be thrusted into the action and exposed to whatever potentially lethal virus is in the area, risking their lives to aid the public. Including those working with poultry on a regular basis, these men and women are potentially in danger at their workplace.

The virus of greatest concern at the present time is the avian flu, or bird flu. So far, the biggest problem has been from human contact with birds, with 144 cases reported. Scientists are concerned that the virus could mutuate into a strain contractable by human contact, which has been reported as a realistic possibility within the next few years. If this happens, it means about a fourth of the US could become sick with the virus, and millions could die.

If you or someone you know has suffered personal injury or if you'd like more information on what you can do to receive compensation in the course of an epidemic, please feel free to contact a personal injury lawyer such as Jacoby and Meyers in San Diego, California.

A jury in Houston awarded $772,500 to the family of a woman who was killed by a fault in the painkiller patch, Duragesic. The patch is intended to deliver hourly doses of fentanyl in a highly controlled chemical system, but a leak in the patch caused the comman anesthetic to terminate the respiratory center in the brain, resulting in Ms. Thompson's fatal suffocation. Analysis of the level of Ms. Thompson's blood showed ten times the level of fentayl normally administered for pain relief.

The jury found that Johnson & Johnson's Alza subsidiary had been negligent in the production of Duragesic, allowing a faulty product to hit the market. The patch has been found defective in 11 of 12 tried cases so far, with about 100 cases pending.

If you or someone you know has suffered an injury due to a defective drug like Duragesic, please feel free to contact a personal injury attorney in your area. Marc Whitehead & Associates of Houston, Texas have years of experience in dealing with defective drug and product litigation.

The Nurses Health Study at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston has revealed that women who take daily amounts of non-aspirin painkillers, such as Extra-Strength Tylenol, are more likely to develop high blood pressure than those who do not.

Tylenol had long been considered a relatively safe product, being one of few non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, also known as NSAIDs. The federal government required NSAIDs to carry a warning label giving notice of the dangerous heart-related side effects of the drugs. Among the NSAIDs are Advil, Motrin, and Aleve. Despite previous allegations, it has been discovered that women taking Tylenol are actually twice as likely to suffer blood pressure complications. Research shows that aspirin remains the safest pain relief drug.

The study was performed on 5,123 women, none of which had high blood pressure at the start of the study. It was found that women aged 51-77 who took a daily average dose of over 500 milligrams of acetaminophen, the mass and chemical substance of one Extra-Strength Tylenol, would have double the risk for high blood pressure in about three years. Similarly, women who took more than 400 milligrams of NSAIDs (such as ibuprofen) had a 78% increase in their risk of developing high blood pressure.

A new sport called tube kiting is becoming more and more popular in the world of sports. The idea behind it is that the rider sits atop a very large and occasionally round inflatable water device. This "kite" can be more than 10 feet in diameter. The device is hooked behind a boat with a tow rope and is dragged in such a way that the rider controls his craft by pulling back at the rope. Given that the device is now traveling between 25 and 35 miles an hour, this can be a very dangerous situation.

Indeed, there have already been numerous injuries and a couple deaths related to the sport. Injuries thus far recorded include a broken neck, a punctured lung, many broken ribs, broken femurs, jaw fractures, neck injuries, back injuries, and one reported case where a 14-year-old girl lost conciousness upon impact with the water from 15 feet in the air. All in all, a total of 12 injuries have been reported. The deaths reported include a 33-year-old man from Texas in April of 2006, as well as a 42-year-old man from Wisconsin, who died in June of the same year.

Conditions in this scenario which cause injuries are generally either the rider's difficulty in controlling his craft, the person in charge of operating the boat is inexperienced, or the tube's reactions to different types of weather. Highlighted areas of concern are high wind gusts which can cause the rider to tilt uncontrollably and the sudden slowing or stopping of the boat driver, which causes the rider to lose his or her lift and sends them into the water in a nosedive. In some of these cases, the slowing of the boat will cause the rider to glide ahead of the boat, resulting in a collision with the boat or other nearby objects such as bridges.

This form of water sport has been banned in at least one National Park Service area including Lake Powell, where a reported four serious boat injury incidents have been linked to tube kiting.

If you or someone you know has been injured due to a water or boat accident, please feel free to contact a personal injury attorney.

In a recent study conducted by the Insurance Research Council (IRC), it has become apparent that if you become injured in an automobile accident, odds are about one in seven that the driver at fault isn't insured. The number of uninsured drivers has risen since the 12.7% of uninsured drivers in 1999, with about 14.6% of drivers on the road today uninsured. These numbers change from state to state, as well.

The states with the highest uninsured driver rates are as follows:

• 26% - Mississippi
  
• 25% - Alabama
• 25% - California
• 24% - New Mexico
• 22% - Arizona

The states with the lowest uninsured driver rates are as follows:

• 4% - Maine
• 6% - Vermont
• 6% - Massachusetts
• 7% - New York
• 8% - Nebraska

According to Elizabeth A. Sprinkel, senoir vice president of the IRC, "Even though most states require drivers to maintain insurance, the problem of uninsured motorists persists.... Responsible drivers who purchase data end up paying for injuries caused by uninsured drivers."

The IRC collected their data by analyzing 11 different insurers, representing about 58% of the private passenger auto insurance market in the U.S. IRS findings are based on ratios of claims made by individuals who were injured by insured drivers versus claims made by individuals injured by uninsured drivers.

If you or someone you know has been injured in an automobile accident or would be interested in more information, please feel free to contact a personal injury attorney such as The Hameroff Law Firm, P.C., in Tucson, Arizona.