Current Events

LOS ANGELES — Wednesday Apple admitted that it deliberately slowed down older iPhones to prevent unexpected shutdowns when the batteries were worn out.

Thursday, the lawsuits began.

A proposed class-action breach-of-contract suit was filed by two consumers, via a Los Angeles lawyer, saying they never consented to allow Apple to slow their older iPhones.

"As a result of Defendant’s wrongful actions, Plaintiffs and Class Members had their phone slowed down, and thereby it interfered with Plaintiffs’ and Class Members’ use or possession of their iPhones," according to the lawsuit, which has been posted online by a New York CBS TV station.

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The California Supreme Court’s ruling broke with decisions nationally to the contrary and created exposure for brand-name drugmakers who could be sued in the state for failing to warn users about the risks of cheaper, generic versions of their drugs.

Leslie Brueckner, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said the decision was the only one currently by a state’s top court to favor consumers of generic drugs, who legally cannot sue generic drugmakers for not warning about their products’ risks.

“This is just a huge victory for public health and safety, and this victory will be felt nationwide,” she said.

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(Reuters) - Boehringer Ingelheim will pay $13.5 million to resolve claims by state attorneys general that the pharmaceutical company used deceptive and misleading marketing to promote the use of four of its drugs for unapproved purposes.

The settlement was announced on Wednesday by attorneys general in 50 states to resolve allegations centered on how the drugmaker marketed its prescription drugs Aggrenox, Micardis, Atrovent and Combivent.

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AKRON, Ohio — Citing a spike in overdose deaths, growing demands for drug treatment and a strained budget, officials here in Summit County filed a lawsuit late Wednesday against companies that make or distribute prescription opioids. On Monday, Smith County in Tennessee did the same. And on Tuesday, nine cities and counties in Michigan announced similar suits.

Cities, counties and states across the country are turning to the courts in the spiraling opioid crisis. What began a few years ago with a handful of lawsuits has grown into a flood of claims that drug companies improperly marketed opioids or failed to report suspiciously large orders.
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TUESDAY, Dec. 19, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday called for tougher warnings and "additional research" into a dye commonly used with standard MRIs.

The dye -- a "contrast agent" -- contains a metal called gadolinium.
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(Reuters) - Lawyers for General Motors (GM.N) on Monday urged a federal bankruptcy judge in Manhattan to throw out a settlement that would require the company to pay $1 billion to car owners suing over faulty ignition switches.

The carmaker made its argument on the first day of a scheduled three-day bench trial before Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.
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It was just a few minutes after 2 a.m. when Dennis Fegan awoke with a start. He got up from his bed and went to the laundry room, where he kept a calendar to record his seizures, and made a vertical mark on July 2, 2006. By late morning, when his parents found him and frantically called an ambulance, there were a dozen vertical marks on the date.
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A Bergen County jury returned a $15 million verdict Thursday against Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon in a suit over alleged defects in its Prolift pelvic repair product.

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A group of Democratic state attorneys general told President Donald Trump they’re prepared to take matters into their own hands if the administration fails to enforce consumer-protection laws.

Trump’s choice of budget director Mick Mulvaney as acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Mulvaney has mocked, suggests the consumer watchdog may be less-than-zealous under his watch, 17 attorneys general wrote Tuesday in a letter to the president. The group, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his California counterpart, Xavier Becerra, said they’ll pick up wherever Mulvaney leaves off.

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More than 200 people became sick and five were hospitalized in Australia after an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness aboard a cruise ship earlier this month.

Symptoms were reported by 209 guests among the 5,796 people aboard Ovation of the Seas ship, according to Royal Caribbean International cruise line spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez. The ship returned to Sydney on Dec. 7 at the end of a 14-night cruise that departed Singapore on Nov. 23.
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Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. is among the deadliest manufacturers in the nation for workers - resulting in deaths of five workers since 2015 - and the company’s safety lapses have also contributed to deaths of motorists on the road, a six-month investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

Tires involved in three fatal accidents were manufactured in Goodyear plants in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Danville, Virginia, where intense production demands and leaks in the roof during storms have endangered both workers and consumers, Reveal’s investigation found.

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