Author: AboutLawsuits

I-Flow Corp. has agreed to settle five lawsuits over shoulder chondrolysis from their pain pumps after a federal judge in Ohio rejected efforts to have the cases dismissed.

The shoulder pain pump lawsuit settlements were reached between I-Flow and plaintiffs on March 16, the same day that U.S. Judge S. Arthur Spiegel denied a motion for summary judgment in the cases, which had been consolidated for a trial scheduled to begin March 23. In the cases, all of the plaintiffs alleged that the use of small pumps manufactured by I-Flow to infuse pain medication following arthroscopic surgery destroyed their shoulder cartilage, causing a condition known as chondrolysis of the shoulder.

I-Flow Corp. had tried to get the plaintiffs’ general causation experts excluded and tried to prevent evidence from being included in the trial that would have been used to form the basis of punitive damages claims. The evidence allegedly included information that the company’s chief executive officer was advised to issue a warning that the pumps should not be used for shoulder surgery before the plaintiffs were injured by the devices.

The details of the settlements have not been released.

According to federal court documents issued in February, there are currently at least 150 shoulder pump lawsuits filed pending against I-Flow and other manufacturers of similar devices that have been linked to the shoulder problems. All of the suits involve allegations that the device makers failed to warn about the risk of shoulder chondrolysis and promoted use of the pain pumps as an alternative to oral medication, even though the FDA never approved the pumps for this purpose.

In November 2009, the FDA required manufacturers of the pumps and the local anesthetics used with the devices to add new warnings about the risk of chondrolysis from should pain pumps. The recent warnings were designed to alert healthcare professionals that the use of pain pumps following shoulder surgery to infuse medication directly into the joint increases the risk of chondrolysis, particularly involving the shoulder.

Last month, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation heard oral arguments about whether all federal shoulder pain pump lawsuits should be consolidated into an MDL, or multidistrict litigation, where all of the cases would be centralized for pretrial proceedings before one judge. The Panel previously rejected a similar request in August 2008, indicating that the number of different manufacturers of pain pumps and different medications used int he devices made coordination for pretrial litigation inappropriate.

Currently all of the cases involved in the shoulder pump litigation are proceeding as individual cases, but some courts have consolidated small groups of cases, as was done in the Ohio cases.

Earlier this year, an Oregon jury awarded $4.75 million against I-Flow in one of the first shoulder pain pump trials to reach a jury. However, several other cases are scheduled for trial throughout 2010 if additional settlements are not reached.

The results of a new study add to the evidence that the side effects of Accutane, an acne drug that is also known as generic isotretinoin, may increase the risk of developing bowel problems. 

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, was published March 30 in the American Journal of Gastroenterology. Researchers say they found that the use of Accutane increased the risk of developing ulcerative colitis by a factor of four.

Researchers looked at data from 87 health insurance plans and found nearly 8,200 people who had been diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which is a group of digestive disorders that includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

They found that not only were those taking Accutane four times more likely to develop ulcerative colitis, but they also determined that the chance of developing the bowel disorder rose in relation to the size of the Accutane dose, strengthening the evidence of a causal relationship. However, the researchers note that the findings do not prove a causal relationship between Accutane and ulcerative colitis, and said that even if there is a risk, the chance of developing ulcerative colitis is small.

The findings come a little more than a month after a New Jersey jury awarded an Alabama man $25.16 million in an Accutane lawsuit against Roche that claimed the drug caused him to develop IBD.

Roche faces nearly 1,000 lawsuits over Accutane, which has been associated with bowel problems, depression and birth defects. All of the lawsuits include allegations that Roche failed to adequately warn users about potential Accutane side effects. The company has lost all six cases that have gone to trial so far, with jury awards totaling $56 million. One of those verdicts, with a $7.2 million award, has been overturned by a Florida appeals court.

Accutane has been used by more than 16 million people worldwide since it was first introduced in the early 1980s as a treatment for severe acne. An Accutane recall was issued by Roche in June 2009, citing the cost of defending Accutane injury suits as a factor in the decision to discontinue the medication in the United States.

In February, Health Canada issued a warning that it has received numerous reports of severe skin reactions, including sometimes fatal reaction known as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome from Accutane. At least 66 reports of Accutane skin reactions were identified by Health Canada, including adults and children, with two of the cases resulting in death.

Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) is a severe skin reaction that occurs as a side effect of several medications. It is highly debilitating and causes the skin to burn from the inside out, producing blisters, severe rashes and the skin may begin to separate from the body. When the skin lesions affect more than 30% of the body, the condition is referred to as Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (TEN). Treatment in a hospital Intensive Care Unit (ICU) or Burn Unit is often required, and the conditions can be fatal in many cases.

A two-year-old girl appears to have died of a heparin overdose in an Omaha hospital after being admitted to treat an infection.  This tragedy is the latest in a string of infant overdoses involving the blood thinner.

Almariah Duque, a 23 month old girl from Dallas, was born with a birth defect and had survived a transplant of her small intestines, pancreas and liver in December, according to a CNN report. However, despite surviving the surgeries, Duque died at the Nebraska Medical Center on Wednesday after being given too strong a dose of the blood thinner Heparin.

Duque was given the drug, an anticoagulant, to prevent blood clotting. The hospital has apologized to Duque’s parents, and have agreed to pay medical and funeral expenses.

The little girl’s death, which is still under investigation by hospital officials, is one of a number of incidents in recent years where infants overdosed on heparin due to preventable human errors.

In October 2006, three premature infants died from a fatal heparin overdose at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, when the hospital used adult dosage vials of Baxter heparin instead of pediatric dosage vials. Following that incident, Baxter Healthcare Corp. sent a warning letter to healthcare workers stressing that they should read labels on the heparin vials with care to prevent such mistakes.

Another similar medication mistake was made in November 2007 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where babies were given the adult doses of the blood thinner, instead of the pediatric version. Although Baxter had agreed prior to this incident to change the labels for their pediatric heparin to avoid confusion, they did not issue a heparin recall for the existing stock of the drug that remained with hospitals.

Actor Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins were among the babies that were given 1,000 times the normal dosage. Quaid later filed a product liability lawsuit against Baxter, the makers of heparin, alleging that the product was unreasonably dangerous because the company packaged adult and pediatric versions of the blood thinner in vials of the same size, with nearly identical blue backgrounds, making it difficult to tell them apart.

In July 2008, 14 premature babies at a Texas hospital were given incorrect heparin doses, resulting in several deaths. That incident was attributed to a pharmacy dosing error, which resulted in babies in the neonatal intensive care unit being given much higher concentrations of blood thinner than they were prescribed.

The wife of a man who committed suicide on Neurontin, an antiseizure medication manufactured by Pfizer, has settled her wrongful death lawsuit against the drug’s maker. 

Linda Shearer, of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, brought the Neurontin suicide lawsuit against Pfizer after her husband, Hartley Shearer, died in 2002. Shearer’s lawsuit alleged that Pfizer’s Warner-Lambert subsidiary failed to properly warn patients and doctors about the increased risk of suicide from Neurontin side effects.

While details of the Neurontin settlement remain confidential, Bloomberg News reports that the Pfizer agreed to pay about $400,000. Trial in the case was already underway in the U.S. District Court in Boston when the deal was reached.

Neurontin (gabapentin) is an epilepsy medication approved by the FDA in 1983, which generated $387 million in sales for Pfizer in 2008.

There are currently about 1,200 Neurontin lawsuits pending against Pfizer, most of which have been brought by plaintiffs who say that Neurontin increased the risk of suicide. In 2008, the FDA required Neurontin and similar epilepsy drugs to begin carrying label warnings alerting users to the risk of suicidal thoughts. All federal lawsuits over Neurontin have been consolidated before U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris.

The Shearer settlement came just days after another federal jury in Boston found Pfizer of guilty of illegally promoting Neurontin for off-label uses, and hit Pfizer with $142 million in damages in a case brought by the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., a subsidiary of Kaiser Permanente. Shearer’s lawsuit also claimed the company had promoted the drug for off-label uses in her lawsuit.

While doctors are free to prescribe drugs for uses not approved by the FDA, manufacturers are prohibited from marketing the drugs for such uses that they have not established are safe and effective.

In 2004, Parke-Davis, a division of Warner-Lambert that was acquired by Pfizer, paid $430 million to the U.S. Justice Department over claims that they were illegally promoting Neurontin for off-label uses, including control of mood swings. Last fall, Pfizer paid the Justice Department $2.3 billion to settle a number of off-label marketing claims which included its marketing of Neurontin.

Three women from Texas have filed Nuvaring blood clot lawsuits against Organon and Merck & Co., the drug makers, alleging that the popular birth control ring caused them to suffer from a deep vein thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism and other injuries. 

The Nuvaring lawsuits were filed on March 26 in the Marshall division of the Eastern District of Texas by Stephanie Huckabee, Amber Dawn Morgan and Christina Renee Pritchard. The women allege that the manufacturers failed to warn consumers about the risk of blood clots from side effects of NuvaRing.

According to a report in the Southeast Texas Record, the women claim that the drug makers down played the risk of problems from NuvaRing, marketing the birth control ring’s side effects as minimal. As a result of the failure to provide adequate and accurate warnings, Morgan alleges that she was hospitalized with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) after using the vaginal insertion ring for only a year and a half, Pritchard alleges that she suffered multiple DVTs after less than a year of use and Huckabee alleges she suffered both DVT and a pulmonary embolism from NuvaRing.

There are currently hundreds of similar lawsuits over NuvaRing blood clots that have been filed in various state and federal courts throughout the United States. As additional cases are reviewed and filed by NuvaRing lawyers, many anticipate that there could be thousands of cases eventually filed.

All of the cases involve similar allegations that Organon Pharmaceuticals failed to adequately research their birth control ring or warn about the potential for NuvaRing blood clot problems, including an increased risk of stroke, heart attack, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and sudden death.

More than 300 federal cases have already been consolidated for pretrial proceedings in an MDL, which is centralized in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri before District Judge Rodney W. Sipple. Parties on both sides have selected 13 lawsuits for an initial pool of bellwether cases, from which the first NuvaRing trials will be selected to gauge how juries will interpret evidence and witness testimony.

The families of two 11-year-old Mississippi girls have filed a lawsuit over alleged design defects with the Yamaha Rhino, claiming that the side-by-side vehicle is inherently unstable and caused an ATV rollover accident that claimed the lives of both girls. The Yamaha Rhino wrongful death suit joins hundreds of other similar claims alleging severe and sometimes fatal injuries were caused when the ATV tipped over, often at slow speeds on relatively flat surfaces.

The parents of Emily Ann Bates and Lauren Elizabeth Dilworth filed the complaint last Wednesday in Gwinnett County, Georgia, the location of the home offices of Yamaha Motor Manufacturing Corp. of America. The wrongful death lawsuit says the two girls died on October 18, 2008 in DeSoto County, Mississippi when their Rhino flipped over while being operated at low speed.

According to the complaint, the 1,000 pound vehicle rolled over onto the two six graders, killing Dilworth instantly and pinning Bates, causing severe trauma to her head. Bates was rushed to Baptist-DeSoto Hospital in Southaven, where she was pronounced dead.

The lawsuit is the most recent of several hundred Yamaha Rhino lawsuits that have been filed throughout the United States. The lawsuits all have similar allegations that the design problems with the Yamaha Rhino make the vehicle prone to rollover, sometimes at speeds as slow as 13 miles per hour on flat pavement.

All federal Yamaha Rhino cases have been centralized for pretrial proceedings as part of an MDL, or multidistrict litigation, before Judge Jennifer B. Coffman in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. The first Yamaha Rhino trials in the MDL, which are known as “bellwether” cases because they are used to gauge how jurors will respond to evidence that will be presented throughout the litigation, are scheduled to begin in October 2010.

The latest lawsuit says that the Yamaha Rhino was defectively designed, leading to an unstable vehicle in which some of the safety measures, such as the roll cage, are more likely to cause severe injury than prevent it. The lawsuit alleges that there have been at least 59 Yamaha Rhino deaths.

Yamaha officials point out that the vehicles’ safety recommendations call for drivers to be at least 16-years-old and licensed. They also recommend wearing a helmet and seat belt.

Last August, a Texas state court jury found that Yamaha was not liable for the wrongful death of a 13 year-old boy in a Yamaha Rhino accident suit filed by his parents. In that case, the jury decision was based on the individual circumstances of that accident, including the fact that the teenage boy was driving a Rhino that had been modified and his father testified that he was not wearing a helmet when the vehicle flipped and crushed him.

Federal regulators have approved a new tamper-resistant pill that they hope will reduce the risk of OxyContin overdose and drug abuse. 

The FDA issued a news release on Monday announcing approval of a new formulation of the OxyContin pill that makes it difficult to override the controlled release of the drugs into the body. The new design is resistant to efforts to cut, chew, crush or dissolve the pill in order to defeat the slow drug release design.

OxyContin is a form of the narcotic oxycodone that is designed to release the painkilling medication into the bloodstream gradually over a 12-hour period. Approved by the FDA in 1996, drug abusers quickly discovered that the pill could be crushed and snorted or inhaled for an instant high. Often referred to on the street as “Hillbilly Heroin” or “Killers,” the drug has been linked to hundreds of drug overdoses and deaths.

The pill is the best-selling prescription pain medication in the United States, with more than $2 billion in annual sales.

In 2007, Purdue Pharma executives plead guilty to criminal charges that they made false and misleading statements downplaying the risk of Oxycontin addiction to doctors. Sales representatives were told to tell doctors that the drug did not cause euphoric highs and was not as addictive as other pain medications. They also told doctors the drug did not cause withdrawal symptoms.

Company executives agreed to pay $600 million in fines for their actions, and made a number of settlements on individual Oxycontin lawsuits filed against the company on behalf of people who had become addicted to the drug and suffered injuries, financial losses, overdoses or death.

The FDA will require OxyContin’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, L.P., to conduct a postmarket study to see how the new pill design affects the rates of OxyContin abuse and misuse. FDA officials say the improvements are much needed, but anticipate that they will have an “incremental” effect on OxyContin misuse.

In 2008, about half a million people used OxyContin for non-medical reasons for the first time, according to data collected by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

A medical malpractice lawsuit has been filed against an Oklahoma doctor after an operating room fire left a breast cancer survivor with severe and permanent burns to her face and the inside of her throat and mouth. 

The surgery fire lawsuit was filed by Jack and Connie Plumlee against Dr. Brad Garber in Tulsa. The complaint alleges that Dr. Garber was performing reconstructive breast surgery on Connie Plumlee when a fire erupted in the operating room due to negligence on the part of the surgeon.

Plumlee went to see Dr. Garber in December at Saint John Medical Center after having survived a double mastectomy due to breast cancer. During the surgery, after Dr. Garber had swabbed Plumlee with alcohol, he lit up a cauterizing tool which sparked the operating room fire. The flames caught on the drapes and ignited and partially melted the breathing tube down Plumlee’s throat.

Plumlee has suffered severe damage and deformation to her face, lips, the inside of her mouth and tongue, according to a local news report from Newson6.com. The lawsuit says that she is in terrible pain and will have multiple surgeries to repair some of the damage, but she is most likely scarred for life.

The plaintiffs say that Dr. Garber told her initially that she would not have scars from the surgery fire accident, and said that the damage would be similar to a chemical peel. When that turned out not to be the case, the Plumlees told Newson6.com that they tried to settle with Dr. Garber out of court, but to no avail.

According to data gathered by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System in 2007, there are about 550 to 650 surgery fires every year, typically resulting in one or two deaths. However, many more patients suffer severe and disfiguring burns as a result of the fires that are often started by a combination of electrosurgical tools, oxygen, and flammable hospital drapes.

Burns on the upper body or inside the patient’s airway account for about 65% of all surgical fire injuries. About 25% occur elsewhere on the body, and 10% happen inside the body cavity. Electrosurgical tools are involved in 70% of those fires, while 10% are caused by lasers. The rest are caused by sparks from wires, light sources, burrs or defibrillators.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists has released recommendations on actions hospitals can take to reduce the risk of surgical fires. These steps include:

• Perform regular operating room fire drills, which less than half of all U.S. hospitals currently conduct.
• Improve communications between surgeons and anesthesiologists, such as doctors announcing when they plan to use an electrosurgical tool, so the anesthesiologist can temporarily lower the oxygen supply.
• Expand training and education of medical staff on awareness and prevention of fires during surgical procedures.

The U.S. government says Toyota Motor Corp. “knowingly hid a dangerous defect” by trying to cover up the Toyota gas pedal problems that have caused some vehicles to unexpectedly accelerate out-of-control. 

The condemnation by the U.S. Department of Transportation comes with a record civil penalty of $16.4 million against the Japanese automaker, which has issued a series of recalls over accelerator problems since September 2009. Transportation Secretary Ra LaHood said that Toyota hid the problem from U.S. regulators for four months.

“We now have proof that Toyota failed to live up to its legal obligations,” said Secretary LaHood in a press release. “Worse yet, they knowingly hid a dangerous defect for months from U.S. officials and did not take action to protect millions of drivers and their families. For those reasons, we are seeking the maximum penalty possible under current laws.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) indicates that it has obtained documents from Toyota suggesting that the company knew that there was a problem with Toyota gas pedals in some vehicles by September 29, 2009. The company allegedly sent instructions on repair procedures for the defective accelerator pedals to distributors in Canada and 31 European countries. According to the NHTSA, the document showed that Toyota was aware of the problem in U.S. vehicles as well.

However, the company did not issue a recall for defective gas pedals in the U.S., and did not notify the NHTSA as required by law. Instead the company issued a Toyota and Lexus recall for more than 4 million vehicles for having thick floor mats that could potentially jam under the pedals. They did not issue a recall for the actual problem with the pedals themselves until January 2010.

Over all, about 9 million Toyotas and Lexus vehicles were recalled between September 2009 and February 2010.

Federal investigators say that the $16.4 million penalty is the largest it can legally assess against Toyota for the gas pedal problem. However, the Transportation Department has not ruled out additional fines.

The Toyota gas pedal problems have been associated with dozens of accidents and a number of serious and fatal personal injury claims. The incidents have touched off a wave of Toyota product liability lawsuits, including several wrongful death claims, and a number of Toyota class-action suits.

Last month, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation heard arguments on whether to consolidate all federal lawsuits against Toyota into a multidistrict litigation (MDL), where the cases will be centralized in one federal court for pretrial litigation.

In February, Toyota became the target of probes by both federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Both federal investigators and the SEC are looking into how the company reacted to complaints about Toyota accelerator problems.

Photo Courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielctw/ / CC BY 2.0

Minnesota officials say they have identified four more former iron miners who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer as part of an ongoing respiratory study of the state’s mining industry.  

The diagnoses of the four miners brings the total number of former Iron Range Mine workers who have the deadly lung disease to 63. The cases were discovered through a review of data from the Minnesota Cancer Surveillance System. The state is working with the University of Minnesota School of Public Health to assess the extent and causes of mesothelioma cancer from about 1,200 current and former taconite miners and their spouses.

Taconite is a flint-like rock that contains high amounts of iron. In the mining process the rocks are ground to powder and the iron dust is removed using powerful magnets. There has been a long-running debate as to whether the high number of mesothelioma cases can be attributed to the taconite, or to exposure to asbestos utilized in pipes and boilers throughout the taconite mines.

Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer found in the lining of the chest and lung. The only known cause of mesothelioma is asbestos, and it is often not diagnosed for 20 to 40 years after exposure. As a result of the long latency period, the cancer is very advanced when it is diagnosed and life expectancy with the disease is limited.

Asbestos was widely used in a variety of manufacturing and construction applications throughout the last century, with use peaking in 1973. Most uses of asbestos were banned in the mid-1980s.

The University of Minnesota says about 1,100 taconite workers have been screened as part of the Minnesota Taconite Workers Health Study, and they anticipate they will finish screening all the workers sometime this summer. A 2003 study from the university concluded that asbestos was the cause of the taconite miners’ mesothelioma, but critics say that taconite has asbestos-like properties and have intensely disputed the study’s findings. It is hoped that the current study underway will be able to definitively determine the source of the mesothelioma cancer.

A California judge has cleared the way for a Taser brain damage lawsuit to proceed to trial, rejecting Taser International’s attempts to dismiss the claim that their stun gun caused a man’s heart to stop.   The trial is scheduled to begin in August, and Taser International was also ordered to pay the plaintiff’s expenses in defending against a portion of their motion, which the court indicated was filed in bad faith.

The Taser lawsuit was filed by Steven Butler, a 48-year-old man with a history of mental illness who was Tasered by police three times on a Santa Cruz Metro bus after he refused to leave the vehicle. The complaint alleges that the Taser caused Butler’s heart stopped and he needed to be resuscitated, resulting in severe brain damage that has left him permanently disabled.

Butler’s lawsuit claims that the Taser stun gun, also known as an electric control device (ECD), caused abnormal heart rhythms that resulted in cardiac arrest and subsequent brain damage. He also alleges that the company misrepresented the safety of Taser guns to law enforcement officials.

Taser attempted to have the lawsuit thrown out and asked Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge J. Jeffrey Almquist to rule that Taser’s Model X26 ECD weapons do not cause cardiac arrest. They also asked the judge to dismiss the case on the basis that they have no duty to warn police that the weapons carry a cardiac arrest risk.

Judge Almquist denied the motion for summary judgment, ruling that a jury will decide whether the Taser caused cardiac arrest for the plaintiff, whether Taser is strictly liable for failing to warn about the heart risks, whether Taser intentionally deceived police officers, whether Taser negligently misrepresented the cardiac safety and whether Taser should pay punitive damages based on fraud and malice.

The court also found that a portion of Taser’s motion was “substantially immaterial and irrelevant,” causing a waste of time for the parties and the court. According to a press release issued by Butler’s attorneys, Judge Almquist ordered Taser to pay the plaintiff’s counsel $15,000 in attorney fees to compensate them for their time in responding to that portion of the motion.

Scottsdale-based Taser International has vigorously defended the safety of the weapons in the media and in other cases, obtaining dismissals of many Taser lawsuits that have been filed against them.

Although the Taser has maintained that their weapons are safe and do not pose a serious risk of fatal or permanent injury, the company issued a memo to police agencies throughout the United States last fall warning officers to avoid chests shots. Although Taser has said it issued the warning as a means of legal risk management for law enforcement agencies, critics have characterized the recommendations as an admission that the Taser guns can cause heart problems. Taser International has disagreed with this interpretation of their recommendations.

The new recommendations, included in a revised training manual, note that the possibility of someone having a cardiac arrest after recently being shot with a stun gun could place Taser and police in the difficult role of having to determine whether the stun gun was a contributing factor. To avoid that, the company recommends that law enforcement agencies train their officers to fire the gun below the chest.

In 2008, Amnesty International released a report on Taser police use, calling for departments throughout the United States to stop using Taser guns or to strictly limit their use to life-threatening situations. The human rights group linked 334 deaths to the use of Taser guns between 2001 and August 2008. Amnesty noted that 90% of the Taser deaths examined involved people who were unarmed and did not appear to present a serious threat to the officers. A large number of the fatalities involved misuse of the weapons, including multiple Taser shocks or exposing suspects to prolonged shocks.

Three residents of a Louisville, Kentucky neighborhood have filed a environmental class action lawsuit against Nuplex Resins following a chemical spill in early February that sent irritating fumes throughout nearby sewer pipes and into homes. 

The toxic tort lawsuit was filed on March 26 in Jefferson Circuit Court by the Beechmont neighborhood residents, calling for the creation of a 1.6-mile class action zone around the resin plant, located in southern Louisville.

The spill occurred on February 1 and Louisville health officials say that it directly affected at least 50 nearby homes. The discharge was into residential wastewater pipes, which then allowed vapors to seep into the affected homes.

The proposed Kentucky chemical spill class action lawsuit covers an area that includes thousands of homes.

The primary chemical in the spill was xylene and city officials said that none of the chemicals were detected at levels that would result in long-term detrimental health effects. Nuplex officials have apologized for the accident and pledged to pay for damages directly related to the spill, according to a story in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Residents who filed the complaint allege that the spill is just the most recent in a continuing string of problems with the plant, which manufactures resin used in industrial paint, dating back to 2000. The lawsuit claims that residents have lost property value due to the plant’s activities. It also seeks to prevent the plant from being able to introduce any more water contamination or other pollutants into the neighborhood.

The plaintiffs are seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory damages from lost property values and are also seeking punitive damages against Nuplex.

A Des Moines, Iowa jury has awarded a collective $32.8 million to a number of people injured or killed in a minvan rollover accident that occurred when a defective Cooper tire blew out in 2007. 

The product liability lawsuit alleged that tire tread separation on a Cooper tire resulted in the driver losing control of a 1997 Chrysler minivan. According to a report by Bloomberg News, the accident resulted in the death of Assata Karla, 28, and injuries that rendered Ivon Toe, 39, a quadriplegic. Four other people in the van were also injured.

The lawsuit accused Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. of liability for the accident, saying that the company did not design the tire with state-of-the-art technology, cutting corners in order to save money. Defense attorneys for the tire company disagreed, saying that the driver, Alfred Lang, was responsible for the crash. The company also said that the tire was old and had been previously damaged.

The Polk County District Court jury ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding $649,000 to the estate of Karla, $420,000 to her husband Gaye Karla, and a total of more than $1 million divided among their five children. In addition, the jury ruled that Toe should be paid $28.4 million for her injuries, and $65,000 should be paid to her two children. Damages to the other four passengers, and $1.5 million in punitive damages brought the total award to $32.8 million.

Cooper Tire officials told Bloomberg News that they plan to appeal the verdict. Cooper is the second-largest tire company in the U.S.

The largest tire maker, Goodyear, currently faces a number of similar tire tread separation lawsuits over problems with their Goodyear Long Range “E’ tires made between 1991 and 2000. According to reports last year, nearly 50 Goodyear tire product liability lawsuits have been filed over the tires, which are used on sport utility vehicles, pickups and vans. Although Goodyear claims that they are “quality tires,” the plaintiffs claim that the tires are defective and have a propensity for tread separation.

A Texas painter has been awarded $11 million in a mesothelioma asbetsos lawsuit against Bondex, Union Carbide and other manufacturers whose parts allegedly contained cancer-causing asbestos. 

A jury in Dallas handed down the verdict on March 30 in favor of Vernon Walker and his wife, Patsy Walker. According to a press release issued by attorneys representing the couple, Walker was diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer after working as a career painter in the construction industry.

Walker worked as a union painter on skyscrapers and other construction projects. The defendants in the asbestos exposure lawsuit said that the types of asbestos Walker had been exposed to, including chrysotile and calidria, do not cause asbestos-related cancer.

The $11 million verdict apportioned 40% of the liability for Walker’s cancer to Union Carbide, and the rest of the blame was divided among defendants that included product manufacturers Bondex, Kelly Moore and Georgia Pacific. However, all of the defendants except Bondex settled out of court before a verdict was reached.

Mesothelioma is a rare and fatal form of cancer that is found in the lining of the chest and lungs. The only known cause of mesothelioma is asbestos exposure, and it is often not diagnosed until decades after exposure. As a result of the long latency period, the cancer is very advanced when it is diagnosed and life expectancy with the disease is limited.

Asbestos was widely used in a variety of manufacturing and construction applications throughout the last century, with use peaking in 1973. Most uses of asbestos were banned in the mid-1980s. Despite the ban, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the number of mesothelioma deaths continues to rise each year due to the latency period, with the number expected to peak in 2010.

Asbestos mesothelioma lawsuits are the longest running mass tort in U.S. history, with the first asbestos exposure case filed in 1929. Over 600,000 people have filed lawsuits against 6,000 defendants after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, asbestosis or other asbestos-related diseases.

A study of children admitted to pediatric intensive care units (PICU) has found that about 6% of the young patients carry colonies of the so-called “super-bug” MRSA, which could lead to severe injuries from hospital infections among other patients or themselves. 

The results of the study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, Maryland, were published in this month’s issue of the medical journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The findings come as health experts grow more concerned about the rate of community-acquired hospital infections making their way into medical facilities and infecting other patients.

Researchers looked at 1,674 children admitted to Johns Hopkins PICU from March 1, 2007 through May 31, 2008. They found that 72 of the children (6%) had colonies of community-acquired Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or CA-MRSA, on their bodies.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are more than 2 million hospital infections acquired each year, resulting in about 90,000 deaths annually. Another 1.5 million long term care and nursing home infections occur every year.

MRSA infections, have accounted for more than 60 percent of hospital staph infections in recent years. The CDC reports that about 126,000 hospital MRSA infections occur each year, resulting in about 5,000 deaths. But some researchers suggest that the number of deaths from MRSA in the U.S. is closer to 20,000 annually.

“These data describe the prevalence of MRSA colonization in patients admitted to the PICU and suggest that CA-MRSA strains may be becoming endemic in hospitalized children,” researchers warned in the study’s results. “Our data show that epidemic CA-MRSA strains are endemic to the PICU. These strains can be transmitted to children in the hospital and can cause invasive hospital-acquired infections.”

The researchers said that the findings add to the body of evidence stressing the growing need for hospitals to screen incoming patients for MRSA colonies in order to prevent hospital-acquired infections.

The findings follow a previous study published in Emerging Infections Diseases last November, when University of New Jersey researchers determined that the community strains now entering hospitals are not replacing hospital strains, but instead are adding to the numbers of people infected, and said that strategies for prevention of infection and treatment of patients needs to be coordinated at the local level.

A medical malpractice lawsuit has been filed against a West Virginia doctor and hospitals for giving chemotherapy to a man who did not actually have cancer. 

The cancer misdiagnosis lawsuit was filed on March 9 in Cabell Circuit Court by Beverly Rakes, whose husband, Scotty Rakes, died on March 13, 2008 due to complications from chemotherapy. According to a report in the West Virgnia Record, the complaint alleges that Rakes was diagnosed as having cancer in his larynx by Dr. Safique Ahmed at his practice in Huntington, West Virginia.

The lawsuit named Ahmed, Cabell Huntington Hospital, Logan Hematology & Oncology and the Marshall University Board of Governors as defendants.

According to the complaint, Ahmed made the cancer diagnosis error in November 2007 after a CT scan of Rakes’ abdomen and a full body PET scan. He treated Rakes with chemotherapy in January and February of 2008.

Rakes sought a second opinion in late February from Dr. Wade Douglas at Cabell Huntington Hospital’s Edwards Cancer Center, who performed a laryngoscopy and determined that Rakes’ larynx and upper esophagus were normal and that there was nothing on which to perform a biopsy.

However, the lawsuit alleges that Ahmed continued to treat Rakes with chemotherapy in early March. Days later, Rakes was diagnosed with neutrapenia secondary to chemotherapy. He was taken to Logan General hospital and died shortly afterward.

Rakes’ wife is seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory damages in the wrongful death lawsuit and says that Ahmed violated standards of care without properly confirming that Rakes had cancer before giving him chemotherapy.

A proposed Minnesota whistleblower law may provide state workers more job protection when they express concerns to legislators and other state officials. 

The bill, passed by the state senate last month in a 46-10 vote, extends the whistleblower protection laws in Minnesota to give most state workers the ability to share concerns about how their departments are operating to legislators, state officials, the attorney general, the governor and the Legislative Auditor’s Office. A similar bill has been introduced in the Minnesota House of Representatives by Rep. Diane Loeffler.

Currently, Minnesota has whistleblower laws that protect private sector employees, but do not fully protect state workers. In some cases, lawmakers say, state offices have put in place policies that specifically forbid state employees from sharing information with legislators.

Critics of the bill say that it crosses a line by having the legislature set policy for employees of the executive branch. Senator David Hann said that the bill could lead state employees to believe that they do not have to obey their superiors and do not have to follow agency policy.

In 2009, the state legislator passed the Minnesota False Claims Act, which mirrors federal whistleblower laws by including a qui tam provision that entitles individuals who report a false claim against the government to a portion of any money that the government recovers from the offenders. In return, the whistleblower must be the first to bring the case to the government’s attention. The law goes into effect on July 1, 2010.

Results of a new study indicate there could be an increased risk of heart failure from Avodart, GlaxoSmithKline’s prostate drug. 

The study, published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, was intended to show that Avodart could be used as a preventative cancer medication. However, researchers discovered an unexpected spike in the number of men who developed heart failure, which may have been caused by Avodart side effects.

Avodart (dutasteride) was approved by FDA for the treatment of urinary problems in October 2002. Avodart works by reducing the size of an enlarged prostate, by reducing the enzymes that turn testosterone into DHT (dihydrotestosterone), which is the primary cause of prostate growth. Earlier this week, GlaxoSmithKline asked FDA to approve Avodart as a prostate cancer prevention drug, citing the study’s findings.

The study included about 6,700 men at high risk for prostate cancer, but who had not tested positive for the disease. The men were given Avodart or placebos for four years and then given biopsies.

While researchers found that prostate cancer was found in only 20% of the men given Avodart, as compared with 25% of men given a placebo, they also found that nearly twice as many men (30) given Avodart developed heart failure, compare with those who developed heart failure while on the placebo (16).

GlaxoSmithKline officials say that the Avodart heart failure results were unexpected and were inconsistent with other studies. They also said that the men who developed heart failure tended to be taking other drugs. Researchers say that there has been no unusual increase in Avodart heart failure risk among men who have used the drug to alleviate urinary problems from an enlarged prostate.

A Baltimore County jury has awarded $1.44 million in a Maryland wrongful death lawsuit filed against a hospital and several doctors that failed to properly treat a case of sepsis, which eventually turned fatal. 

The medical malpractice lawsuit was brought by the family of Thomas Murphy against doctors at St. Joseph Medical Center of Towson, Maryland. Murphy died of sepsis on June 11, 2007, a day after he was admitted to the hospital, according to a report in the Baltimore Sun.

The Baltimore County Circuit Court jury ruled this week that doctors at St. Joseph Medical Center failed to provide proper care to Murphy and awarded the family $1.44 million. The sepsis lawsuit alleged that doctors determined Murphy had some kind of infection, but thought it likely that he had pneumonia. Murphy was given a broad-spectrum antibiotic and admitted to the hospital, where he died the next morning.

The only defendant left as part of the lawsuit at the time of the ruling was Dr. Richard Tempel. Two other doctors and St. Joseph Medical Center settled with Murphy’s family out of court.

Sepsis is a form of body-wide inflammation that results from the reaction to an infection. Symptoms can include high heart rate, a high respiratory rate, a high or low body temperature and elevated white blood cell count. Sepsis can cause organ damage and organ failure, and severe cases result in death about 20 to 35% of the time.

The hospital malpractice lawsuit comes as St. Joseph is facing a number of other lawsuits over unnecessarily heart stents, which the hospital has acknowledged may have been implanted in hundreds of patients.

In recent months, St. Joseph has sent letters to 538 patients notifying them that a former heart surgeon, Dr. Mark Midei, may have implanted a heart stent that they did not need. Several patients have reported that Dr. Midei told them that they had severe coronary blockages when in truth the blockages were minor or non-existent, and may not have required a permanent stent to prop the artery open.

The stent surgery problems at St. Joseph Medical Center were uncovered as part of an on-going federal investigation of Medicare fraud and other health law violations involving the financial relationship between the hospital and an affiliated group of cardiologists.

While St. Joseph hospital initially denied that any patient care was impacted, they are no longer making such statements, and have since started reviewing all procedures performed by Dr. Midei between May 2007 and 2009. However, Maryland malpractice lawyers investigating cases indicate that additional unnecessary stent procedures at St. Joseph may have been performed, which the hospital has not yet acknowledged.

Federal drug reviewers say they have concerns that the side effects of Stalevo, a Parkinson’s disease medication by Novartis, may increase the risk of prostate cancer. 

The FDA announced on Wednesday that it has begun a safety review of Stalevo and its potential link to prostate cancer after data from a long-term clinical trial resulted in an unusual number of men developing the disease. The safety review does not mean that the FDA has concluded that there is a causal connection between Stalevo and prostate cancer; only that such a possible link is under investigation.

Stalevo (entacapone/carbidopa/levodopa) is a prescription drug used to treat dyskinesia (movement disorder) associated with the onset of Parkinson’s disease. The drug was approved by FDA in June 2003.

Concerns about Stalevo side effects arose during a 4-year clinical trial called Stalevo Reduction in Dyskinesia Evaluation – Parkinson’s Disease (STRIDE-PD). Researchers looked at 745 patients at 77 centers in 14 countries in a double blind, randomized clinical trial that included 31 sites in the U.S. During the study, 245 men received Stalevo for 2.6 to 4 years. Researchers found that 9 of those men (3.7%) developed prostate cancer, while less than 1% of men not given Stalevo developed prostate cancer during the same time period.

The FDA notes that other trials did not find evidence of a prostate cancer link; however side effects from long-term exposure had never been conducted until the STRIDE-PD trials.

Currently, the FDA is recommending that patients taking Stalevo should continue to do so. The agency is still reviewing the information and will make more information available as it develops during the safety review. The FDA warned healthcare professionals to be aware of the possible Stalevo prostate cancer risk and urged them to follow current guidelines for prostate cancer screening.