Not Only Tomatoes
July 2, 2008
Whole Salad Bowl Now Target of Expanded FDA and CDC Investigation
The FDA and CDC have expanded their investigation of the ongoing Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak to target “foods commonly served with tomatoes.”
But David Acheson, M.D., the FDA’s food safety director, refused to name the other possible salad-bowl suspects, although he did confirm that evidence uncovered over the weekend persuaded the FDA and CDC to widen the search.
Nonetheless, Dr. Acheson said, tomatoes remain the main suspect.
In addition to widening the search to include other produce, Dr. Acheson said the FDA has activated the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN), a cooperative laboratory network established in the wake of Sept. 11.
He said that FERN was last activated during the E. coli contaminated spinach investigation last year and before that was used to pinpoint the source of contamination of dog food imported from China.
Also today the CDC announced that the number of confirmed Salmonella serotype Saintpaul cases now stands at 869, with 107 hospitalizations.
Deny, Delay, Defend
April 1, 2008
Auto insurers play hardball in minor-crash claims
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — If you are injured in a minor car crash, chances are good that you will be in the fight of your life to get the insurance company to pay all the medical costs you incur — even if the accident was no fault of your own.
That’s what CNN discovered in an 18-month investigation into minor-impact soft-tissue injury crashes around the country. Those are accidents in which there is little damage to the vehicle and the injuries to people are not easy to see by the naked eye or conventional medical tools like X-rays.
Since the mid-1990s, most of the major insurance companies — led by the two largest, Allstate and State Farm — have adopted a tough take-it-or-leave-it strategy when dealing with such cases.
The result has been billions in profits for insurance companies and little, if anything, for the public, according to University of Nevada insurance law professor Jeff Stempel.
“We can see that policyholders individually are getting hurt by being dragged through the court on fender-bender claims, and yet we don’t see any collateral benefit in the form of reduced premiums even for the other policyholders,” Stempel said.
“So I think now we can say to continue this kind of program is in my view institutionalized bad faith.”
Lipitor Ads Misleading
February 26, 2008
Pfizer to End Lipitor Ads by Jarvik
Under criticism that its ads are misleading, Pfizer said Monday that it would cancel a long-running advertising campaign using the artificial heart pioneer Robert Jarvik as a spokesman for its cholesterol drug Lipitor.Pfizer has spent more than $258 million advertising Lipitor since January 2006, most of it on the Jarvik campaign, as the company sought to protect Lipitor, the world’s best-selling drug, from competition by cheaper generics.
But the campaign had come under scrutiny from a Congressional committee that is examining consumer drug advertising and has asked whether the ads misrepresented Dr. Jarvik and his credentials. Although he has a medical degree, Dr. Jarvik is not a cardiologist and is not licensed to practice medicine.
The McKinsey Documents
February 9, 2008
Secretive Allstate File Could Show ‘Bad Faith’
Behind the fight between Florida’s insurance commissioner and Allstate Insurance Co. is a mystery that could have come from a John Grisham novel.Secret Allstate documents – known as the McKinsey documents – allegedly show how the insurance giant intentionally has made low-ball claims offers to its customers for years, netting Allstate billions of dollars in the process.
But the McKinsey documents have never seen the light of day.
Trial lawyers who have sued Allstate in recent years have eagerly sought them, and Allstate reluctantly has turned them over to lawyers under subpoena. However, each time a judge has prohibited lawyers from distributing them to the media and the public under a protective order.
Florida now is demanding the documents from Allstate and other insurers in a broad-based investigation of the companies’ business practices, including alleged collusion with other insurers and their claims handling procedures. The issue came to a head last week, when Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty suspended Allstate’s right to issue new insurance policies in Florida. A judge later lifted McCarty’s suspension.
Allstate spokesman Mike Siemienas said the company intends to turn over the documents, but Florida might not find them all that revealing. The McKinsey documents at issue concern auto insurance – not the hot-button issue of homeowners insurance. Some of the strategies laid out in the documents were just ideas and never became Allstate policy, Siemienas said.
Still, Whitney Buchanan, an Albuquerque, N.M., trial lawyer who has seen the elusive documents, said that if Florida’s insurance commissioner receives them, they could go a long way to showing that Allstate has not been playing fair.
“These documents are devastating to them in bad faith litigation,” Buchanan said.
Helping Legal-Aid
February 5, 2008
Chicago Bar Foundation initiative to help legal-aid organizations
More than 20 local law firms have joined a new Chicago Bar Foundation initiative to support legal aid and pro bono efforts.”Law Firm Leadership Circle” membership requires firms to commit to several goals, including encouraging attorneys to annually complete at least 35 hours of pro bono work and donating at least $300 a year per attorney to legal-aid organizations.
The circle expands on the Chicago Bar Foundation’s efforts to ensure access to the justice system. There are fewer than 300 legal-aid attorneys who serve more than 1 million low-income residents in the Chicago area.
Last year, the foundation launched a fundraising campaign to supplement the incomes of legal-aid attorneys, collecting about $900,000 from law firms and corporations. This year’s campaign will be led by Dan Webb, chairman of Winston & Strawn.
$4 Million Compensation follows $5.7 millions
January 29, 2008
Everyone hears about the “McDonald” case ad nauseum but this sort of cases where the doctor is simply negligent again and again and people die again and again is not heard of much.
$4 Million Awarded in Wrongful Death Suit after 45 Minutes Deliberation
A Wetzel County jury deliberated for about 45 minutes before deciding a New Martinsville doctor should pay $4 million to the surviving children of a woman who died from what one witness called an “intra-abdominal catastrophe.”
The wrongful death verdict is the second multi-million dollar decision against Dr. Anandhi Murthy in the past 10 months.
Just last spring, the law firm Bordas & Bordas of Wheeling obtained a $5.7 million award against Murthy on behalf of another plaintiff.
In the most recent case, Elizabeth Karpacs, 76, came to Wetzel County Hospital in June 2001 with serious abdominal symptoms and complaints, according to testimony in the case. Testimony during the four-day civil trial showed that surgery would have been needed to correct a life-threatening ischemic bowel condition, Karpacs’ attorneys said. Murthy instead treated Karpacs with fluids and antibiotics, the patient went home for the evening and Murthy did not see her again. She died the next morning.
Is Water Considered Soft Drink?
January 6, 2008
Chicago sued over bottled water tax
The Chicago City Council on Jan. 1 imposed a first-in-the-nation 5-cent tax on bottled water sold in the city in the hopes of decreasing plastic waste and generating $10.5 million in revenue, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Saturday.The lawsuit says the tax is illegal because it evades a state law prohibiting taxation on food consumed away from the establishment of purchase.
The suit states bottled water is not classified as a soft drink and should be therefore considered in the same group as milk, sports beverages and teas, a group not subject to tax.
Not Such a Good News…
December 19, 2007
I often thought they were doing something right there in Madison County for them to remain constantly in the cross hair of the anti-consumer, anti-justice, anti-American-Justice-System and pro-business groups such as the American Tort Reform Association. I wonder what changes have been implemented for ATRA to let Madison County fall short of its Blue Ribbon position on the List… More on that later.
Group: South Florida top `judicial hellhole’; Ill.’s Madison County falls from list
On Tuesday, the American Tort Reform Association left Madison County off of its rankings of “judicial hellholes” for the first time in the list’s six years — big stuff for the local court system that once topped the rankings for three years in a row.”It’s a very upbeat time for all of us in Madison County,” said Callis, the seven-year circuit judge who became chief judge in May 2006. While cautioning she’d never put much stock in what the pro-business lobbying group considers the worst legal venues for lawsuit defendants, the newest rankings “indicate we continue to move forward, making progress.”
The newest list is topped by South Florida, followed by Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and Gulf Coast, Illinois’ Cook County including Chicago, West Virginia and Nevada’s Clark County that includes Las Vegas.
