News Inferno; December 19, 2013

Chemicals in the fluid used in the hydraulic fracturing—fracking—gas drilling technique may disrupt the functioning of human hormones and lead to increased risk of infertility, cancer, and other health problems, new research finds.

The results of a new study, carried out by the Endocrine Society and published in the journal Endocrinology, suggest that endrocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which can interfere with the body’s normal hormonal functions, are found in fracking fluid, Aljazeera America reports. According to co-author Susan C. Nagel, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, “More than 700 chemicals are used in the fracking process, and many of them disturb hormone function.” EDCs, she said, could “raise the risk of reproductive, metabolic, neurological and other diseases, especially in children who are exposed” to them.

To read the complete article, please click here: newsinferno.com.

News Inferno; December 24, 2013

A study of older men reveals that testosterone treatments are linked to dangerous heart risks and have no established benefits.

The large Veterans Affairs study looked at senior men diagnosed with low hormone levels, as well as other health issues, and looked at the way in which the men reacted to testosterone treatments, including heart attack, stroke, and death, according to an Associated Press (AP) report.

Testosterone gels, patches, and injections are touted as treatments for so-called “Low T,” a fairly recent term for a largely invented condition for which there is no true diagnosis. Massive advertising has been dedicated to Low T, which seems to be another term for the normal male aging process. Meanwhile, treatments have been associated with serious side effects, according to the AP.

To read the complete article, please click here: newsinferno.com.

Lawyersandsettlements.com; December 30, 2013

Jefferson City, MO: In the wake of Medtronic Infuse Bone Graft lawsuits alleging injuries, Medtronic investors have filed a lawsuit against the medical device company, claiming false and misleading statements regarding the use of the Infuse Bone Graft for reduction of pain and for complications associated with treating degenerative disc disease. Meanwhile, recent reports and studies have shown damning evidence against Medtronic’s product.

Two reports released in 2013, both published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, indicated that the genetically engineered Infuse product has “little benefit beyond standard treatment and could expose patients to harm.” One report went further, stating that previously published studies were biased and they were little more than “infomercials” for medical device companies. Both reviews also mentioned a possible cancer risk with the product.

To read the complete article, please click here: lawyersandsettlements.com.

News Inferno; December 16, 2013

Last week, plaintiffs in a number of product liability lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson (J&J) involving the antipsychotic drug Risperdal, told a Pennsylvania judge that documents describing the medication’s risks are vital to the public interest should not remain under seal.

Nearly 275 product liability lawsuits have been brought against J & J’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit, and attorneys for the plaintiffs blasted a motion entered by the drug maker seeking to maintain a 2011 order protecting the confidentiality of a series of clinical studies on Risperdal, Law360 reports.

The plaintiffs’ complaint alleges that Risperdal caused gynecomastia—abnormal growth of breast tissue in adolescent boys—and they argue that the protected material should not be considered proprietary because it consists of observations about the effectiveness and risks of the drug, according to Law360. The brief states that these are “safety documents that require disclosure for the well-being of the public, full and unfettered review by regulatory authorities and the education of healthcare providers who are prescribing this powerful drug.”

To read the complete article, please click here: newsinferno.com.

Lawyersandsettlements.com; December 15, 2013

Lowville, NY: The empire that is DaVita Healthcare Clinics is about to get a bit larger with the launch of a new dialysis center at Lewis County General Hospital (LCGH) in Lowville, New York. Approved in September 2011, DaVita is hoping to open in March of next year. The hospital, according to the Watertown Daily Times (11/18/13), will host the clinic but will not be responsible for it, although the hospital will benefit from having a dialysis facility on site, together with ancillary service such as lab tests.

Still, there are those who are not happy about DaVita’s legal troubles, and suggest the original approval may not have happened or may not have gone so smoothly, had more people been aware of the cases.

It should be noted that as with any lawsuit, innocence is presumed until guilt is proven in court.

DaVita has had its share of trouble inherent with GranuFlo side effects. GranuFlo, and its close cousin NaturaLyte, are agents used in the process of dialysis. Manufactured by a competing dialysis company that also operates a collection of dialysis centers, GranuFlo and NaturaLyte were found to be associated with dosing errors that could elevate a patient’s bicarbonate levels, posing a significant hazard and risking GranuFlo cardiac arrest.

To read the complete article, please click here: lawyersandsettlements.com.

CNN; December 15, 2013

When he was on the baseball field, Ryan Freel was unafraid to fling his body, and his head, into plays -- diving after balls and crashing into outfield walls.

That fearlessness earned the undersized Freel a spot in the big leagues, as well as a raft of concussions.

Now, nearly a year after his death, Freel has the distinction of being the first Major League Baseball player to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), according to researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine.

"The real important issue is that he hit his head multiple times -- small hits, big hits, in baseball and outside of baseball," said Robert Stern, co-founder of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at BU.

To read the complete article, please visit cnn.com.

USA Today; December 17, 2013

This was supposed to be the year that Congress actually did something about a festering national problem: immigration.

It got halfway there after last year's elections spooked Republicans into realizing they'll become a permanent minority if their policies don't evolve with the nation's changing demographics. A major immigration overhaul passed the Senate in June with bipartisan support, then languished in the House of Representatives.

The main holdup is that a segment of House Republicans simply can't abide creating a path to citizenship for the 11 million or so undocumented people in this country. As lengthy and arduous as the proposed path is, the critics say it amounts to "amnesty" for lawbreakers and would invite a wave of illegal immigration. Some also fear that citizenship would create millions of Democratic voters.

To read the complete article, please click here: usatoday.com.

Lawyersandsettlements.com; December 16, 2013

Washington, DC: In spite of the National Football League (NFL) shelling out $765 million to settle lawsuits related to brain injury, the brain injury lawyer remains increasingly busy as more and more brain injury victims emerge from the shadows. These are professional players of sport in both football and hockey; all claiming their employers should have known about the potential for traumatic brain injury and did little to foster concussion prevention.

One of the lawsuits, filed recently by five former players of the Kansas City Chiefs, cites studies on concussion and brain trauma that date back to the 1920’s.

According to KDVR FOX-31 (Denver, 12/4/13), a study conducted by pathologist Harrison Martland in 1928 labeled repetitive head trauma and degenerative brain disease as the “punch drunk syndrome.” The latter term has been used for decades when referring to pugilists, presumably stemming from a 1934 study by Dr. Harry Parker on neurological degeneration in boxers.

However, among other studies the brain injury lawsuit cites is a 1937 meeting of the American Football Coaches Association, during which participants are said to have acknowledged a “keen awareness” of concussion risk.

To read the complete article, please click here: lawyersandsettlements.com.

Forbes; December 16, 2013

Thanks to a leak of classified documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, we learned this summer that Verizon (and presumably other phone companies) were regularly handing over to the federal government metadata for all of their customers. Metadata being a fancy word for lists of all the phone calls made, which numbers were calling which numbers and how long those conversations lasted.

While jaws were still on the floor regarding the scope of such collection, which would include hundreds of millions of people (including you, unless you don’t have a phone), two Verizon subscribers got to work drafting up a lawsuit. Larry Klayman, a conservative activist, and Charles Strange, father of a Navy SEAL who died in Afghanistan, sued the federal government as well as Verizon, saying that the phone company handing over their information to the feds was a violation of the U.S. Constitution and an “outrageous” breach of privacy. In a scathing opinion out of the D.C. Circuit Monday, federal judge Richard Leon agreed with them, saying the phone metadata collection program is “almost certainly” unconstitutional.

To read the complete article, please click here: forbes.com.

Blastr; December 13, 2013

Warner Bros. may have won all of the latest rounds in the Superman copyright battle, but the heirs of creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster aren't throwing in the towel just yet.

Over the last year, as Superman turned 75 and the latest big-screen incarnation of the character debuted in Man of Steel, Warner Bros. and DC Comics scored a series of legal victories over the Siegel and Shuster families, both represented in the lengthy legal fight by attorney Marc Toberoff. Back in the spring, a federal judge ruled that Siegel's family had effectively handed over all claim to the character in a 2001 agreement with DC Comics, and just a few weeks ago the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Shuster's family had basically done the same in a legal agreement with DC in 1992. Now Toberoff and the Shuster family are firing back with a request that the Circuit Court rehear the arguments in the ruling. But why?

To read the complete article, please click here: blastr.com.

NPR; December 15, 2013

In 2008, attorney Kimberly Motley picked up and left her native Milwaukee, where she lived with her husband and two kids, and moved to Kabul. It wasn't just the first time she's been to a conflict zone, it was the first time she'd ever been out of the country.

"My kids were younger, and so they didn't totally understand what I was doing," Motley tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "My husband was extremely supportive. Anyone outside of that in my family just didn't really quite get it."

And, to be frank, says Motley, she wasn't entirely sure what she was doing either. She thought it'd be a good career move — work in Afghanistan for a year with the State Department, train lawyers there, learn and make some money, then return to her work as a public defender in the U.S.

But what she saw in Afghanistan shocked her. Motley remembers a prison tour in which prisoners were making tools. Looking around the room, she noticed how the prisoners far outnumbered the guards, and imagined how easily an attack might happen. "In addition ... there wasn't any running water, it was extremely cold because there wasn't any heat, any electricity, you hear coughing everywhere," she remembers. "It was a very eye-opening experience."

To read the complete article, please visit npr.org.

CNN; December 11, 2013

Criminal Defense Attorney Mark Geragos talks about the 'affluenza' defense that kept a teen D.U.I. offender out of prison.

Read more at cnn.com.

The New Yorker; December 10, 2014.  By Jeffrey Toobin, guest speaker at the Trial Lawyers Summit in South Beach, Florida, January 19-22, 2014.

It’s time for my annual legal year in review—a year in advance. Here’s what we’ll be discussing at the end of 2014.

1. God v. Same-Sex Marriage. The political and legal
momentum is very much with supporters of same-sex marriage. Opponents of
marriage equality—or, as they call themselves, supporters of
traditional marriage—are looking for new arguments, and they’ve fixed on
one involving religious liberty. The basic idea is that including gay
couples in the definition of marriage discriminates against those who believe only in heterosexual unions.

To read the complete article, please visit the newyorker.com.

CNN; December 2, 2013

Passengers aboard US Airways Flight 2846 were waiting on the tarmac at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport when their pilot came on the intercom.

"We've been notified about a health emergency aboard the aircraft," passenger Dean Davidson heard.

A few minutes later, Davidson saw a flight attendant walk toward another passenger sitting a few rows ahead of him. The flight attendant handed the slender middle-aged man a medical mask.

Emergency personnel boarded the plane a short time later and removed the man, Davidson said. A firefighter then came on the intercom and announced that the passenger had active tuberculosis and was contagious and that other passengers on the flight had been exposed. He advised them to contact their physicians immediately, Davidson said.

To read the complete article, please visit cnn.com.

New York Times; December 2, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO — With blood oozing from deep lacerations, the two patients arrived at California Pacific Medical Center’s tidy emergency room. Deepika Singh, 26, had gashed her knee at a backyard barbecue. Orla Roche, a rambunctious toddler on vacation with her family, had tumbled from a couch, splitting open her forehead on a table.

On a quiet Saturday in May, nurses in blue scrubs quickly ushered the two patients into treatment rooms. The wounds were cleaned, numbed and mended in under an hour. “It was great — they had good DVDs, the staff couldn’t have been nicer,” said Emer Duffy, Orla’s mother.

Then the bills arrived. Ms. Singh’s three stitches cost $2,229.11. Orla’s forehead was sealed with a dab of skin glue for $1,696. “When I first saw the charge, I said, ‘What could possibly have cost that much?’ ” recalled Ms. Singh. “They billed for everything, every pill.”

To read the complete article, please click here: nytimes.com.