“The (court) system represents one of the key defense mechanisms that individuals have if a manufacturer has not made the risks of a product clear to the public.” This statement was not made by a plaintiff’s attorney. It was made by the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Jeffrey M. Darien. The Journal has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case of Wyeth v. Levine and argues that federal law does not and should not preempt state products liability law thereby prohibiting injured citizens from suing drug manufacturers for serious injuries caused by unsafe drugs. The doctors are arguing that lawsuits help to create safe drugs and the FDA simply is not equiped to do the job alone. You can read more about the New England Journal Medicine’s position here.
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Posted on September 28, 2008 by James Sabatini - Legal News
Boston University Medical School’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy has been studying the brains of former NFL players that donated their brains for medical research. The Center has now studied the brains of six former NFL players, and five of the six brains studied were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy. This form of brain damage is exceedingly rare in people who are as young as the five deceased NFL players were when they died. It only shows up in people this young if they have suffered repetitive brain injuries. Significantly, chronic traumatic encephalopathy DOES NOT SHOW UP ON CT SCANS, X-RAYS, OR MRIs! The condition can be confirmed only by post-mortem tissue analysis.
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Posted on September 25, 2008 by James Sabatini - General, Legal News
Should I settle my personal injury case or take it to trial? This is a question that plaintiffs face from time to time and it can be a very difficult decision. A new study has come out showing that the plaintiff was wrong 61% of the time in electing to take the case to trial versus settling the case. In other words, in 61% of the cases where the plaintiff rejected the settlement and went to trial, the verdict was less than the defendant’s best settlement offer. It appears that this study only involved cases where the verdict was in the plaintiff’s favor. The study also notes that when the defendant incorrectly elects to go to trial, the verdict is much higher than the plaintiff’s settlement demand. Read more about the personal injury settlement and verdict study here.
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Regent Sports and the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission have issued a recall for about 190,000 recreational soccer goal nets following the strangulation death of a 20-month-old child. The child was found with his neck and arm entangled in the net of the soccer goal.
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Federal regulators have recalled 600,000 Simplicity brand baby cribs on top of the one million cribs recalled in September 2007. The owner of the Simplicity brand is SFCA, Inc. of Reading, PA. SFCA bought the Simplicity brand at a public auction in April 2008 after the Simplicity company went out of business. SFCA has refused to conduct a recall of the cribs because it contends that it is not liable for defective products made before it acquired the brand. Consequently, the government has gone to the retailers including Wal-Mart to execute the recall. The defective cribs have been linked to several infant deaths. The defect involves a drop side that can become detached creating a dangerous gap that can suffocate infants.
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