United States of America

Knee replacement and knee implant lawsuits allege that devices loosened or did not last as long as they should.  Zimmer faced over 15,000 Biomet lawsuits over its NexGen implant. DePuy Synthes Attune Knee implant lawsuits were also a big thing.  Now Exactech recall lawsuits will be getting filed in massive numbers in 2022 after a big recall.

There have been a lot of questions about hip and knee replacements in recent years. DePuy, Exactech, Stryker, and Zimmer have had – to put it mildly – concerns raised about their products. These companies would argue that the problems are mostly with patients who are having bad outcomes and blaming the insurance companies.

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emergency room malpractice Many states are trying to carve out malpractice caps and different standards of care for emergency room doctors in medical malpractice cases.  

The thinking starts out okay.  Emergency department doctors should be given the benefit of the doubt because things are happening so quickly. But ER doctors are always getting the benefit of the doubt from jurors.  There is statistical evidence of this.  

More importantly, the standard of care already bakes in the fact that things are sometimes happening at the speed of light in the ER.  That is why reasonableness is always based on all the facts and circumstances. Continue reading

The case of Crawford v. Abbott Laboratories, Inc. is one of the most recent examples of an NEC infant formula lawsuit. The plaintiff, Candace Crawford, brought the case on behalf of her deceased infant ZaRiyah Crawford. The Complaint was filed against both Abbott Laboratories, Inc. and Mead Johnson Nutrition in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Baby ZaRiyah was born prematurely (34 weeks gestation age) at North Florida Regional Medical Center on December 2, 2019. ZaRiyah had a birthweight of just 3 pounds and 14 ounces, making rapid weight gain very important to her health. After her birth, ZaRiyah was sent to the NICU.

For the first 3 days at the NICU, Baby ZaRiyah was fed with her mother’s pumped breast milk combined with donor human breast milk. After these first 3 days, however, ZaRiyah was fed with a combination of human breast milk supplemented with Enfamil and Similac cow-milk based formulas.

Procter & Gamble issued a recall of 30 dry conditioners and shampoos because these products may contain benzene, a cancer-causing chemical P&G recalled aerosol spray products will familiar names such as Aussie, Pantene, Herbal Essence, and Waterless. dry shampoo products from Old Spice and Hair Food.

The products were made by Proctor & Gamble and distributed nationwide through online sales like Amazon and through traditional retailers.

Is this a big deal or a little deal?  Is the Benzene risk real?  This post talks about the recall and what it means.

Incline sleepers for infants, such as the Fisher-Price Rock n’ Play, put infants at risk of harm, including Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID).

If your baby was died or was seriously injured in an inclined sleep you may be able to file a product liability lawsuit and get financial compensation. Miller & Zois is currently accepting inclined sleeper cases from victims.

Dangers of Inclined Sleepers for Babies

According to a new public warning from the FDA, certain leadless pacemakers made by Medtronic have a defect that may cause them to poke holes in the heart resulting in life-threatening complications.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently posted a new warning regarding a potentially fatal defect in the Medtronic Micra leadless pacemaker devices. The November 17 warning advises doctors about new findings which show that patients with the Medtronic leadless pacemaker implanted have displayed a significantly higher risk of cardiac perforation and potentially deadly complications.

Transvenous vs. Leadless Pacemakers

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A lawsuit filed against the Cleveland VA Medical Center has settled for $500,000. The lawsuit was filed after the death of a 59 year old veteran, who was being operated on to repair a hernia. What he was not told was that the VA surgeon had only been licensed for a few months, and that this was the first time that he had ever performed the procedure by himself. Experience matters is such a cliche. In surgery, data shows time and time again that experience is everything. Sadly, a hole was made in the deceased man’s intestines during the surgery, allowing the contents of his bowel to spill out into his abdomen – a hole which the VA hospital failed to recognize for several days. The deceased became very sick after developing an infection, and died several months later. Just a tragic, sensless story.

Hernia Repair Verdicts and Settlements

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This week the MDL Judge in the Paragard IUD lawsuits will consider a motion to dismiss filed by the manufacturers of the defective birth control device. The Paragard MDL now has 550 individual cases by plaintiffs who claim that their Paragard IUD had a defect causing it to fracture during removal and leave broken pieces inside their uterus. Last month, the defendants in the Paragard lawsuits filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the plaintiffs’ failure to warn claims were preempted under federal law.

The MDL is currently balking at ruling on this motion and based on comments made at the motion hearing and subsequent proceedings in the MDL it seems highly unlikely that she intends to grant the motion. Instead, the MDL judge seems much more interested in getting the first bellwether trials scheduled.

Paragard Lawsuits Backstory

Last month, Elizabeth Burch (University of Georgia School of Law) and Margaret Williams (Johns Hopkins) published a paper entitled Perceptions of Justice in Multidistrict Litigation. The paper was based on a survey of 217 women who are plaintiffs in various mass tort MDLs. Based on this survey, the authors conclude that the MDL system for handling mass torts in federal court is deeply flawed and fails to deliver justice to victims.

This paper has been making the rounds in legal academic circles and received some attention from national news outlets like Reuters. In my humble opinion as a lawyer directly involved in the MDL mass tort system, this paper is based on an absurdly flawed survey that is not reflective of most MDL plaintiffs.

Summary of the Survey

It’s the peak of the summer beach season, but if you drop by your local retailer to pick up some sunscreen, you will likely see a lot of empty shelf space. Why? Because independent consumer product testing recently discovered that a number of major sunscreen products contained hazardous levels of benzene. Benzene is a notorious and well-known human carcinogen that is very harmful to the human body.

In response to this discovery, manufacturers and major retailers have started pulling sunscreen spray, lotion, and other products from their shelves. Now plaintiffs’ lawyers around the country are evaluating whether contaminated sunscreen lawsuits could be the next big mass tort.

Valisure Finds Dangerous Levels of Benzene in Sunscreen Products