Product Liability Lawyer Blog

March 28, 2016

Massive Nestle Recall Due to Fears Frozen Food Contains Glass

While the Nestle Corporation is most well known for its many sweets – chocolate and candy products like a Nestle Crunch bar – the company is also major producer of other food items. Many of these goods are sold in the freezer aisle, including DiGiorno pizzas, Stouffer’s frozen dinners and Lean Cuisine frozen meals.

At any given time, there are millions of units of frozen food manufactured by Nestle in supermarkets across the country. According to a recent news feature from AOL, the company has issued a massive recall that is affecting around 3 million units of product all containing spinach. This is not the first recall involving spinach, but normally a spinach recall involves the fear of listeria or E. coli bacteria. Continue reading

March 25, 2016

Did Xarelto Makers Fail to Disclose Data?

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

A recent feature from CBS News examined whether Johnson & Johnson and Bayer, the makers of Xarelto, knowingly withheld certain important data for a letter to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The specific claim made by lawyers for Xarelto plaintiffs in the multi-district litigation (MDL) class action lawsuit is that the defendants purposely withheld information from results published involving a Duke University analysis of drug trial results. This information relates to a blood testing device that was not functioning property. The device was being used to test patients who were on Warfarin (Coumadin), which is the traditional alternative to Xarelto. Continue reading

March 21, 2016

New “Aggressive Rehab” After Total Knee Replacement

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

After having a total knee replacement procedure, there is generally a somewhat long and painful recovery period. This is especially true in the case of a bilateral total knee replacement. This is a controversial procedure that involves a surgeon, or even two surgeons, replacing both of a patient’s knees at the same time with an artificial knee implant device.

While it is common for a patient to get severe osteoarthritis in both knees at the same time and to ultimately need both knees replaced, many doctors prefer to do the operations on separate occasions. The reason they prefer this course of action is because even though the total recovery time is doubled, the patient is up and walking around much faster, and this means they are out of the hospital and less likely to get a serious infection.

Patients are also less likely to get a serious clotting disorder known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT), where clots form deep in the veins of the legs and then travel to other parts of the body, where they can cause serious damage and even death. On the other hand, doctors who perform bilateral knee replacement procedures favor the reduced rehabilitation time. Continue reading

March 18, 2016

Verdict: $500 Million to Defective Hip Implant Victims From J&J

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

Product-producing giant Johnson & Johnson, along with its DePuy unit, lost a $500 million verdict in a case involving five plaintiffs who alleged they were injured by defective hip implants. Specifically, the Pinnacle metal-on-metal implants, which are known to not only fail more quickly than advertised, but to cause serious injury in the form of tissue damage, bone erosion and high levels of metal in patients’ blood.

The decision followed a two-month trial and a one-week juror deliberation period. Jurors ultimately decided these artificial hips were not only defectively designed, but that the companies that sold them did not warn the public about the potential risk, as they had a duty to do.

This prompted jurors to award not just $140 million in compensatory damages, but an additional $360 million in punitive damages. Compensatory damages are intended to compensate the victim. Punitive damages, which are also paid to the victim(s), are intended to punish the defendant for egregious behavior and gross negligence. Continue reading

March 10, 2016

Coach Andy Reid Unable to Attend NFL Combine after Knee Replacement

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

Football teams regularly release injury reports during the season and even during the offseason. Normally these reports are for players, but the Chiefs recently included head coach Andy Reid on the injured reserve, as he was forced to miss the NFL combine after having a total knee replacement operation, according to a recent news feature from CBS Sports.

The NFL combine is the most important event of the offseason in terms of the upcoming draft of NCAA athletes. The combine involves a series of physical tests, medical evaluations, mental health evaluations, and player performance evaluations to determine what players a team should consider drafting and in which order. There is very little reason why a head coach would want to miss the combine, but sometimes is is not possible to attend due to health issues. Continue reading

March 5, 2016

New Reversal Agent for Pradaxa Works on Brain Hemorrhage

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

A recent article from Tech Times discusses the effects of a new reversal agent for the drug Pradaxa on patients suffering from a brain hemorrhage. It is important to note these are brain hemorrhages caused by the drug Pradaxa, which is a relatively new type of anticoagulant medication.

When patients take Pradaxa, we now know there is a significant risk they they will develop a serious internal bleeding disorder than includes possible intracranial bleeding, which is also known as brain hemorrhage. There is no known way to determine which patients will develop the serious bleeding disorder, as risk factors are not known in the event that there are any. Continue reading

March 1, 2016

FDA Questions Whether Xarelto Should Have Been Approved

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

According to a recent news feature from the New York Times, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now conducting an investigation into whether a blood testing device used during clinical trials, which we now know to be defective, led to an approval of Xarelto that never should have happened.

Xarelto is a member of new class of drugs known as new oral anticoagulants (NOACs), which are being prescribed to treat patients with a serious medical condition known as atrial fibrillation. A person with this disease has an irregular heartbeat not caused by a valve defect that can cause large blood clots to form deep in a patient’s veins. The clots can break free in a condition known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and travel through the patient’s circulatory system, where they can rupture in the lungs in what is known as a pulmonary embolism (PE), or they can block the flow of blood to the brain causing a stroke. Continue reading

February 28, 2016

Ford Recalling Nearly 400,000 Ranger Pickups After Airbag Death

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

According to a recent news article from CBS, Ford Motor Company is recalling approximately 391,000 Ford Ranger pickups manufactured between the years 2004 and 2006 after man died as a result on an airbag explosion.

The recall was announced a few days after officials in South Carolina announced that a 52-year-old man from Kershaw was killed as result one of these defective airbags. Authorities say he was driving his Ford Ranger when he crashed into a cow that was in the road. After hitting the cow, he spun into a fence. His airbag deployed at some point during this accident, either when he hit the cow or the fence. Continue reading

February 26, 2016

Johnson & Johnson Agrees to Transvaginal Mesh Settlement

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

According to recent news from the Legal Reader, Johnson & Johnson, a major pharmaceuticals firm and medical device manufacturer, has agreed to settle as many as 3,000 of the products liability lawsuits it is now facing related to its transvaginal mesh implant device.

The reported amount of the settlement is $120 million, and it involves claims that its transvaginal mesh products caused pelvic erosion, extreme pain and discomfort, and internal organ damage as a result of manufacturing and design defects, as well as failure to adequately warn potential victims. While many lawsuits are still ongoing, somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 of the claims will be dismissed as part of this settlement. Continue reading

February 22, 2016

Questions about Xarelto Clinical Trials

by Jeffrey S. Glassman

There is a good chance that the millions of people watching this year’s Super Bowl will see a commercial for Xarelto. Xarelto, with a generic name rivaroxaban, is making hundreds of millions of dollars for Beyer and Janssen (a wholly owned Johnson & Johnson subsidiary), and these companies will take any chance they can get to increased sales.

Xarelto is a often called a blood thinning medication like Warfarin (Coumadin), which is its biggest competitor, but it is actually an anticoagulant. Xarelto serves the same purpose as a blood thinner, but workers differently. A blood thinner, as the name implies, thins a patient’s blood, and this makes it more difficult for blood clots to form. There is nothing wrong with clotting when we are talking about a cut that is bleeding. The human body produces platelets to form clots to stop bleeding when a laceration occurs. Continue reading