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There are a variety of ways a total hip replacement surgery can be performed these days. While every procedure ultimately involves making an incision and removing the patient’s deteriorating hip and replacing it with an artificial device, some doctors will make an anterior incision, some will cut along the side, some will cut through the muscle, while others will move the muscle.  There is now a special table that doctors can use to give them better access to the site of procedure, and in some cases, doctors will use computers to make the map the site and even robots to perform the actual surgery.

ward1While the proponents of every one of these techniques obviously claims that their procedure is the best, a recent report outlined in News Medical looks at the results following various techniques to see which one actually has better results in the various cases. Continue reading

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In the past two decades, the number of patients undergoing a total knee replacement procedure each year has gone up considerably.  As the number of surgeries has increased, there have been many advancements in the techniques used by surgeons to perform the total knee replacements. The recovery time, too, has lessened and the chance of success has increased.

mhANPeMAccording to a recent news feature from ABC, there are certain things that can be done to increase the chances of success even more, so as to avoid the chance that the device will fail after the procedure to the greatest extent possible.  Continue reading

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In California, the state attorney general recently announced her office would be pursuing legal action against drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson for its alleged false advertising and deceptive marketing of its vaginal mesh products.woman

Now, Johnson & Johnson has fired back on those claims,with a spokeswoman telling Legal Newsline that the decision to sue the company was not just, and that the company has no plans to settle the case. Instead, it plans to fight the allegations vigorously.

Of course, it likely has no choice. To concede that it deceptively marketed or falsely advertised would be to put ammunition in the hands of thousands of plaintiffs who are still waiting for their day in court with the medical product manufacturer.  Continue reading

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Two drug companies have been ordered to pay $67 million over false claims made regarding the efficacy of cancer drug Tarceva, the U.S. Justice Department announced.whitepills

The drug is approved for some patients who suffer from non-small cell lung cancer or pancreatic cancer. However, OSI Pharmaceuticals LLC and Genetech Inc. reportedly misled consumers about how effective the drug was in treating non-small cell lung cancer.

This settlement was reached after allegations that between January 2006 and December 2011, the two drug makers promised the product would be effective for non-small cell lung cancer patients. What they failed to disclose was that research had shown it only worked if the patients hadn’t ever smoked or had any sort of mutation in their epidermal growth factor receptor. The latter is a protein that has been traced to the spread of cancerous cells. Continue reading

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Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $70 million to a male teen whose use of antipsychotic drug Risperdal caused him to grow breasts. greenpills

The verdict was handed down in a state court in Pennsylvania, after jurors concluded the drug-making giant failed to disclose that its product could cause gynecomastia, the unnatural growth of large mammary glands in males. Not only that, jurors concluded, but the company actively and with intent destroyed, falsified or hid records that pointed to this fact.

This $70 million damage award interestingly only includes compensatory damages, as opposed to punitive damages. It also is significantly more than the $2.5 million awarded to an Alabama teen in 2015 who developed size 46 DD breasts.  Continue reading

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Trial is underway in one of the first lawsuits heard by a jury regarding drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Synthes Inc. using a type of bone cement absent FDA approval on the spines of patients who later died in surgery, just moments after they were injected with the compound.spine

The wrongful death lawsuit, filed in a Washington state court, focuses on the intentional off-label use of the bone cement which was known to be risky. What should have been a routine procedure to treat back pain for a 67-year-old patient in 2007 ended up killing her. Patient’s family sued Synthes, the surgeon and the hospital for use of the bone cement, known as Norian, even though it wasn’t approved for use in back pain surgery.

Many are closely watching the development of this case, making it high-stakes not just for the parties involved but for future plaintiffs as well. It’s being covered by Courtroom View Network (CVN). Plaintiffs allege the manufacturer marketed Norian for use in spinal surgeries, despite a company physician characterizing such use as akin to “human experimentation.”  Continue reading

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There have been a lot of advances in the total hip replacement surgery process over the past decade.  Much of that has focused on the development of new artificial hip joints as well as computer aided methods of performing the operation.  There have also been improvements in the cutting guides surgeons use to know where to make the cuts and align the device.

untitled-1019029-mA cutting guide is similar to a carpenter’s jig and allows the surgeon to make as precise as possible cut in the patients existing joint and bone to allow for a proper tight fit for the new artificial joint.  The better the new joint matches up, the less of a chance there will be any complications later on. Continue reading

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Boston Scientific Corp. is a named defendant in some 36,000 product liability lawsuits related to its surgical mesh devices, also sometimes referred to as pelvic mesh, pelvic slings or transvaginal mesh. These devices have been touted as a means to repair a host of pelvic disorders in women, but instead, they have proven extremely dangerous. womanwindow

Now, the company is doing something it probably should have done long ago: Updating its safety warnings.

Of course, it shouldn’t take 35,000 lawsuits to prompt this kind of action from a pharmaceutical manufacturer, but better late than never. The question some people might have, though, is whether the safety warnings will have any impact on their ability to bring a civil lawsuit against the firm. The answer is probably not, so long as the surgery took place before the safety warnings were updated. Each individual case will be different, and there will be a lot of factors to consider, which is why we encourage anyone who suspects they may have suffered injury as a result of these devices to seek immediate legal counsel. Continue reading

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Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson is facing down two lawsuits filed by attorneys general in California and Washington for failure to disclose the risks associated with their pelvic mesh – also known as vaginal mesh – devices. woman2

As it now stands, the company is already a named defendant in 25,000 personal injury lawsuits filed by U.S. consumers over the surgical mesh, which is touted as a means to shore up weakened pelvic muscles and help to control urinary incontinence. But plaintiffs – overwhelmingly women – say that’s not what happened.

Instead, they allege this device was both defectively designed and defectively manufactured and that Johnson & Johnson failed to warn consumers of the potential risks. As a result, tens of thousands of woman and their families have suffered profound adverse effects, from intense and chronic pain, urinary dysfunction, inflammation and loss of sexual function or incredible pain during sexual intercourse.  Continue reading

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When the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 handed down its decision in Pliva v. Mensing, it essentially left a large group of people – those who use generic prescription drugs – without any recourse if those drugs proved dangerous or defective.

Pills pouring from a medication bottle

Generally, it’s been held that makers of brand name drugs can’t be liable for generic drugs because they don’t actually make them. The Pliva decision made it so that generic drug makers can’t be liable for failure to warn (a key in any defective drug case) because by federal law, generic drug makers don’t write the labels. The labels are written by the brand name manufacturers and then approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

All this makes it interesting that the California Supreme Court will be taking on the issue of “innovator liability,” also known as brand manufacturer liability for generics in the case of T.H. v. Novartis Pharm. Corp. You see, California is one of the few states where courts have held that brand name manufacturers could in fact be liable for dangerous generic drugs. That ruling was handed down in Conte v. Wyeth, in which a California appeals court determined the brand name maker of a drug called Reglan, used to treat gastroesophageal reflux disease, could be found liable for injury caused by the generic version. The California Supreme Court declined to review that decision, so it’s been generally accepted in that state.  Continue reading

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Disclaimer – The settlements above are only a sample of cases represented by our office. Each case is different and the amount of a potential resolution of your case will vary considerably depending on a substantial amount of factors. Some case results were worked in conjunction with partnering law firms.

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