Current Events

Federal safety regulators received more than 260 complaints over the last 11 years about General Motors vehicles that suddenly turned off while being driven, but they declined to investigate the problem, which G.M. now says is linked to 13 deaths and requires the recall of more than 1.6 million cars worldwide.

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Coloplast A/S (COLOB), the Danish maker of medical products, agreed to pay about $16 million to settle lawsuits accusing it of injuring women with its vaginal-mesh inserts, three people familiar with the accord said.

Officials of Humlebaek, Denmark-based Coloplast agreed in January to resolve about 400 suits over the inserts, which are designed to support internal organs, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the settlement. The accord will provide an average payment of about $40,000 for each claimant, they said.

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Thoratec Corp. (THOR) issued an urgent safety advisory about the use of the pocket controller for its mini heart pump after four patients died and five others were injured.

The notice includes new information and labeling for the HeartMate II LVAS Pocket System Controller prescribed to 2,142 patients since August 2012, Pleasanton, California-based Thoratec said yesterday in a statement. It helps operate the company’s HeartMate II left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, which takes over for a failing heart. Patients and their caregivers encountered problems when changing to a backup controller from their main system, the company said.

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Medtronic said about 1,000 people have sued the company over its bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) product, Infuse, and that many more lawsuits may be coming.

In addition, several states now are looking into sales and marketing practices involving Infuse, which is used in spine surgery.

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A federal judge has approved settlement of a class-action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase for its force-placed insurance practices, an agreement that could pay more than $300 million to about 750,000 mortgage borrowers.

The national settlement prohibits the bank for six years from getting commissions, kickbacks or reinsurance from the insurance, which it obtains when a homeowner's policy lapses.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a juror's comments during trial deliberations can be used to show dishonesty during the jury selection process.

The justices said Monday they will hear an appeal from a South Dakota man seriously injured in a motorcycle accident with a truck. He sued for negligence, but a jury returned a verdict for the truck owner.

Click here to read more. My opinion is that the Integrity of the Jury System requires the Supreme Court grant a new Trial under these circumstances. If a juror admits during deliberations that his/her verdict was based on the fact that a similar occurrence to a family member ( in this case her daughter ) would have ruined her daughter's life( if the Jury finds for the Plaintiff ) shows a clear bias against the Plaintiff. There is no way this Juror could have truthfully stated during jury selection that she can be a fair and impartial juror in this case. Even though the remaining Jurors found a verdict in favor of the Truck driver and may not have been influenced by the offending Juror's misconduct Justice demands the Supreme Court overturn the Verdict and grant a new Trial. The right to trial by Jury granted under the seventh amendment of the U.S.Constitution is too important to condone this juror's misconduct. In this case the Civil Justice System must set the example for prospective jurors and litigants and preserve the Integrity of the jury system. What do you think?

Dozens more people have been sickened by a salmonella outbreak tied to Foster Farms chicken that was thought to have been over, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

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Four surviving spouses of reverse mortgage borrowers filed a lawsuit this week against Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan claiming they faced undue harm due to reverse mortgage statute.

The lawsuit comes several months following a previous suit filed by AARP on behalf of non-borrowing spouses of reverse mortgage borrowers, in which a court ruled against HUD and granted relief to the plaintiffs, to be determined by the agency. HUD appealed the ruling, but the appeal was later thrown out.

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At age 17, La Monica Greene began using a novel contraceptive device. The St. Louis teenager had obtained a prescription for NuvaRing — a vaginal, once-a-month birth control ring.

Several weeks later, she died.

Her mother, Monica Greene, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the manufacturers and sellers of NuvaRing, which include Dutch and U.S. companies now owned by New Jersey-based Merck & Co. Inc.

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Updated 3/2/2014

Unfortunately, consumer safety is not the number one priority of car manufacturers. GM's reckless behavior in ignoring this product defect has tragically caused too many fatalities and serious injuries. Recall the Chevrolet corvair once proclaimed as " unsafe at any speed". Then came the Ford Pinto's explosive gas tank upon minor collision causing loss of life and catastrophic injuries. The bean counters calculate that its cheaper to ignore the fix of hazards and unsafe Product defects even those causing loss of life and limb.In this most recent example of callous indifference GM has finally been forced to acknowledge this unsafe condition and issue recalls of over 1,000,000 cars and finally issue a meaningless and long belated public apology. This likely being done to minimize the amount of any proposed fine to be imposed. This will no doubt be a meaningless fine compared to the profits earned and tremendous harms and losses caused to too many innocent victims and their families.Government agencies such as NHTSA  have too often dropped the ball and do not adequately protect the public from such dangers which have been allowed to persist for years. Justice and accountability will again depend upon our civil justice system in which jurors will be called upon to decide GM's fate and fairly and justly compensate the victims and their families and determine the amount of punitive damages necessary to punish GM and deter it and other manufacturers from behaving in such an irresponsible manner. In such circumstances the civil justice system becomes the real defender of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Laura Christian's 16-year-old daughter, Amber, died inside a Chevy Cobalt, on July 29, 2005.

"I went downstairs and my phone rang," Christian recalled. "Amber had been in an accident and she didn't make it."

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