Current Events

By some measures, Federico C. Vinas was a star surgeon. He performed three or four surgeries on a typical weekday at the Daytona Beach, Fla., hospital that employed him, and a review showed him to be nearly five times as busy as other neurosurgeons. The hospital paid him hundreds of thousands in incentive pay. In all, he earned as much as $1.9 million a year.

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Toyota agreed on Friday to a settlement with the families of two women in a fatal crash the morning after an Oklahoma jury became the first to find the company responsible for the unintended acceleration of a car.

The verdict came after Toyota had won its first three trials over the acceleration issue. Legal analysts said it could embolden plaintiffs in hundreds of other lawsuits that have been filed against the automaker.

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Liggett Group says it struck a $110 million deal with thousands of Florida smokers, announcing the first major out-of-court settlement of tobacco litigation stemming from a historic state court ruling.

The company, whose brands include Liggett Select and Pyramid, says it’s settled claims with more than 4,900 of the roughly 5,300 individual plaintiffs seeking compensation for cancers and other illnesses. The individual settlements range from four to six figures, depending on the illness and smoking habits of each plaintiff, industry experts said.

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Boston Salads and Provisions Company, Inc., of Boston, MA, is recalling approximately 222,959 pounds of ready-to-eat chicken salad products due to possible contamination with Listeria monocytogenes, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced Thursday evening.

The products were produced between Aug. 23, 2013, and Oct. 14, 2013, and shipped to wholesalers for further distribution to retail locations in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. A list of the products subject to recall can be found here.

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CDC study looked at meningitis, other conditions in 6 hardest-hit states

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 23 (HealthDay News) -- The tainted steroid injections that caused a deadly meningitis outbreak last year seem to have triggered a broad range of symptoms in patients, according to a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since it began in September 2012, the outbreak of fungal meningitis has sickened 750 people in 20 states, resulting in 64 deaths, based on the latest CDC figures from last month.

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NEW YORK — Bank of America was found liable for fraud Wednesday for a program — dubbed "the Hustle" — that caused millions in losses to federally backed mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac amid fallout from the financial crisis.

The civil verdict by a Manhattan federal court jury similarly found the bank's Countrywide Financial unit found liable, and also determined that former Countrywide executive Rebecca Mairone committed fraud while overseeing the loan-origination program.

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Brake problems have prompted Nissan to recall about 153,000 sport utility vehicles from the 2013-14 model years and Suzuki to recall 210,000 motorcycles, the manufacturers have informed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The Nissan recall covers the 2013-14 Nissan Pathfinder, the 2013 Infiniti JX35 and the 2014 Infiniti QX60, according a report Nissan posted on the N.H.T.S.A. Web site. About 101,000 of those are Pathfinders. Nissan says that during light braking on rough roads, the antilock braking system can allow “stopping distances that are longer than customer’s expectation for the given pedal force. This may increase the risk of a crash.”

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The Justice Department plans to use its tentative $13 billion settlement with JPMorgan Chase as a blueprint for reaching similar deals with other banks in probes related to bad mortgages and the 2008 financial crisis, a law enforcement official familiar with the negotiations said Monday.

If such an effort is successful, it could usher in an era of high-priced settlements throughout the banking industry.

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Boston Scientific Corp. (BSX) agreed to pay $30 million to settle a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging the company’s Guidant unit knowingly sold defective heart devices, U.S. officials said.

Guidant, which Boston Scientific bought in 2006 for $27.5 billion, was accused of hiding defects in its Prizm line of heart defibrillators from patients, doctors and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Justice Department, which joined the suit, said today in statement.

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(Reuters Health) - More patients are filing claims after being burned, scarred or otherwise injured during laser surgeries performed by non-doctors, a new study shows.

Researchers found 75 out of 175 legal cases related to procedures like laser hair or scar removal involved someone other than a physician operating the laser.

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The safety of Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ARIA)’s leukemia drug Iclusig is being investigated by U.S. regulators because of the increasing frequency of reports of serious blood clots and narrowing of blood vessels in patients.

“Health-care professionals should consider for each patient, whether the benefits of Iclusig treatment are likely to exceed the risks of treatment,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said today in a safety announcement. The agency urged doctors and patients to report side effects of the drug.

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