Government Initiative Promises $1.1 Billion in Research Funds The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ National Institutes of Health has launched a brand-new – and much-necessary – initiative to combat the country’s opioid epidemic if a person wants to get help with the addiction. HEAL, an acronym for Helping […]
Category: Mass Torts
U.S. Attorney General Creates Task force To Address Epidemic The opioid crisis in America exists because both the illegal and prescription forms of the drug are highly addictive and commonly abused. In 2016, the latest year for which figures are available, over 100 deaths daily were attributed to overdoses, amounting to […]
Epidemic Costs Country Billions Each Year, Leading Government Entities To Sue Big Pharma Beloved singer Tom Petty became part of America’s opioid crisis when it was revealed that the 66-year-old’s cause of death in Oct. 2, 2017, was an overdose of painkillers for a broken hip. An autopsy conducted by […]
Recreational Vehicles should be reasonably safe at this point in history. They are using well-tested, well-vetted components. Right? RV manufacturers and consumers probably thought so. No one had reason to suspect a component installed in thousands of RV’s – a refrigerator- could be the source of lethal danger. Right? But […]
Industry Uses Old Strategies on New Products Electronic cigarettes have boomed into a $5-billion-a-year business expected to expand by nearly 25 percent in 2018. Not surprisingly, Big Tobacco is clamoring to corner the market. Reynolds American, of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company fame, opened a subsidiary called R.J. Reynolds Vapor, proudly […]
Someone asked what was one of the most challenging cases I have worked on as a drug and medical device litigator for the past 23 years. It was the Vioxx litigation. When the drug was first introduced to the market by Merck in 1999, I had concerns it could easily […]
A doctor at his desk takes a drag off a Camel, deliberately deceiving the public about the dangers of the drug. Fred Flintstone fires up a Winston in front of Wilma and rattles off the company’s slogan, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” Even Jed Clampett, of The Beverly […]
After a decade of receiving several black eyes over failed metal on metal implants, the orthopedic device industry is bracing itself for a second wave of metal failure related embarrassment. The metal on metal debacle resulted in tens of thousands of unnecessary revision surgeries due to metal poisoning. Many of […]
Stryker V40 Femoral Heads (CoCr) Associated With Spontaneous and Catastrophic Head-Neck Dissociation Stryker may face yet another crisis associated with their total hip replacement medical devices – and this time it may be related to its large LFIT-V40 chrome/cobalt heads. These heads have been reported in medical literature to potentially […]
On September 27, 2016, the Department of Health Therapeutic Goods Administration (the Australian equivalent of the Food & Drug Administration) issued a hazard alert relating to LFIT Anatomic CoCr V40 femoral heads manufactured and marketed by Stryker. The LFIT V40 femoral heads are made of a cobalt and chromium alloy and […]
