Partner, Jim Pettit, has been filing Yaz/Yasmin/Ocella lawsuits in Bergen County, New Jersey state court where they are being managed by Judge Martinotti, one of NJ’s mass tort judges.

Merck’s revenue from Fosamax reached $3.19 billion in 2005.

In DVT a blood clot can break loose from the vein, move to the lung, and cause a PE which can lead to death. Information from four recent studies is presented to some extent in the Warnings and Precautions section of the drug. An additional study commissioned by the FDA is being finalized and reviewed. The two recent British Medical Journal studies reported a two (2) to three (3) fold greater risk of VTEs (venous thrombolic events, which include DVTs and PEs) in women using oral contraceptives which contain DROSPIRENONE rather than levonorgestrel. Two studies in 2009 reported a 1.5 to 2 fold higher VTE risk in women using DROSPIRENONE-containing drugs compared to the risk in levonorgestrel-containing drugs. The FDA recommends that if you are using these drugs that you do not stop taking them without first talking to your health care professional, but also that you learn the symptoms of blood clots such as persistent leg pain, severe chest pain or sudden shortness of breath, and if you experience any of these that you call your doctor immediately.

If you or a loved one took YAZ, YASMIN OR OCELLA, please contact Locks Law Firm LLC for a free consultation on your legal rights.

Congress passed a law in 2002 which required utility companies to inspect aging lines. Unfortunately there are not nearly enough inspectors to supervise the work being done by the utilities and thus the work is largely left to them without government oversight. Most of the distribution lines or gas mains are made of steel and some of the older ones are made of cast iron. Both are subject to corrosion. As there are many miles of pipeline, much of it over 50 years old, the job of prioritizing the inspections and repairs generally falls to the local gas company. The failure to properly inspect and coat or replace aging lines can be negligent particularly where those lines are located in heavily populated areas. In the frenzy to cut the federal deficit it is unlikely that significantly more inspectors will be funded even though they are needed. When an explosion occurs the remedy may lie in a civil lawsuit for damages. Hopefully such a remedy will provide compensation to those injured or killed and provide incentive to utility companies to raise the priority of gas line inspection and replacement in populated areas.

Once gas is burned, if it is not burned completely because of a lack of oxygen necessary for complete combustion or because of dirty burners, clogged chimneys, cracked furnaces and other problems, carbon monoxide may infiltrate a home. Everyone knows that carbon monoxide in sufficient quantities will cause death. But prolonged exposure to less than lethal amounts of carbon monoxide from furnaces, water heaters even vehicles parked in abutting garages may cause damage to the brain and heart. This damage is often exhibited by severe headaches, flu like symptoms, short term memory loss, severe fatigue, neurological deficits and many other symptoms. Unfortunately, many doctors do not associate the symptoms their patients are demonstrating with carbon monoxide unless multiple people have the same symptoms, which is often not the case, or the story of a malfunctioning heating appliance is brought to their attention. When that happens the victim generally returns home or to the source of exposure and is constantly re-exposed until the problem is discovered. Landlords, builders, furnace and hot water heater installers are often negligent in failing to properly install or maintain their gas burning appliances and can be liable for serious injuries to people chronically exposed to carbon monoxide. People who believe that they may have been exposed to carbon monoxide and are experiencing symptoms such as severe headaches should go to the emergency room immediately and ask to be tested for carboxy hemoglobin. A test performed promptly after leaving the source of exposure will be most likely to produce evidence of the exposure so that doctors will know what to treat and the investigation into the cause can take place.

The children all formerly attended Kiddie Kollege, a daycare situated in a former thermometer factory building that was contaminated with mercury. The children, who banded together in a class action law suit, will be entitled to medical monitoring in the form of neuropsychological testing, valued at $1.5 million. The testing will help the doctors and families of the children identify future illnesses and the information will be input into a database made available to the children’s pediatrician and parents. Children are more susceptible to neurotoxins than are adults.

The successful verdict for the children is the result of a 5 week bench trial before Judge James Rafferty in Woodbury, New Jersey, after 4 long years of hard-fought litigation.

Other defendants offered settlements to the victims before the verdict, including $965,000 from the real state individuals and agencies in the first week of trial and $950,000 from the County of Gloucester just minutes before the verdict was delivered .

Liability was proportioned among the defendants as follows:
State of NJ (10%), County of Gloucester (20%), Township of Franklin (35%), and the Sullivans (real estate individuals and agencies) (35%). The State and the Township, therefore, are still on the hook.

The case is a further victory because of the great rulings on lack of Tort Claims Act immunity for the governmental defendants.

Congratulations to the children and their attorneys.

As a result of documents obtained in those lawsuits, it is alleged that SKB hired STI to not only set up deadlines for the publication and to assist the authors, but also to write outlines and detailed chapter content. In essence, it is alleged that STI wrote the book, and the medical “authors” signed off on the transcript. Dr. David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner noted “To ghostwrite and entire textbook is a new level of chutzpah. I’ve never heard of that before. It takes your breath away.” Naturally, the authors and Glaxo claim that SKB “had no involvement in content” and that the authors themselves conceptualized the entire book and worked on all the content themselves.

As noted in some of my earlier blog posts, documents obtained in various drug lawsuits have shown that drug companies regularly use ghostwriting companies like STI (see Merck and the Vioxx litigation, for example, in which our firm was involved) to generate medical literature that supports, promotes and props up the use of a company’s drugs to doctors in order to increase sales. But as Dr. Kessler said, ghostwriting a whole textbook takes this to a new level.