Current Events

More than 300,000 BMW owners will soon be eligible to claim their portion of a $478 million settlement over allegations that a design defect resulted in water damage to electrical components in vehicles’ trunks.

Reuters reports that the settlement, filed in U.S. District Court in New York last week, resolves a class-action lawsuit that claimed the carmaker knew for years about an issue in the affected vehicles that could cause water damage, interferring with the vehicle’s electrical components including lights, speedometer, and wipers, but did nothing to address the problem.

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General Motors is recalling more than 17,000 Cruze vehicles from the 2016 and 2017 model years. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the seats in some of those vehicles may have been improperly manufactured.

The problem is limited to the Cruze's driver and front passenger seats. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a bracket on those seats "may have been incorrectly welded to the seat-back frame." If that's the case, it's possible that the head-restraints won't work as intended, increasing the risk of injury during collisions.
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Doctors and hospitals failed to tell the Food and Drug Administration about cases in which cancer was spread around inside women’s bodies by a surgical tool used to operate on the uterus, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office.

Scattering cancer cells worsens the disease and decreases a patient’s chances of long-term survival.

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According to court documents, Vaginal Mesh Injury lawsuit claims continue to be filed nationwide. Many thousands of women who had a vaginal mesh or bladder sling implanted to treat pelvic organ prolapse (POP) or stress urinary incontinence (SUI) have experienced serious injuries, devastating urinary incontinence, recurrent bladder infections and other major side effects from the commonly used popular plastic medical devices.

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A Texas physician has been awarded $11.4 million in a federal whistleblower lawsuit against a major U.S. hospital service provider.

Dr.
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German automaker BMW AG (BMWG.DE) has agreed to pay up to $477.7 million to settle a class-action lawsuit covering about 318,000 U.S. luxury car owners who may have suffered water damage harming electrical components in vehicle trunks.
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Japan's Takata Corp is set to plead guilty Feb. 27 in federal court in Detroit to a single felony count of wire fraud to resolve a U.S. Justice Department investigation into ruptures of its air bag inflators linked to at least 16 deaths worldwide, according to a court filing Tuesday.

Last month, the auto parts firm agreed to the guilty plea as part of a $1 billion settlement in the world's largest ever recall.
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Maserati is recalling at least 39,381 Quattroporte, Levante and Ghibli vehicles after discovering two separate defects that could lead to fires.

According to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, adjusting the front seats could cause the seat writing harness to rub against metal points, leading the seats to malfunction. In rare cases, the malfunction could trigger an electrical short, which could lead to a fire. Maserati expects this recall to begin on March 21.

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LAS VEGAS (AP) - Reno officials got a report on the “nightmare bacteria” in late August.

A Washoe County woman in her 70s had been admitted to a local hospital with a full-body response to an infection. It was carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, a bug resistant to all 26 federally approved antibiotics. The patient, whose identity has not been disclosed, died in early September, reported the Las Vegas Sun.

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For years, Sharissa Derricott, 30, had no idea why her body seemed to be failing. At 21, a surgeon replaced her deteriorated jaw joint. She’s been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease and fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition. Her teeth are shedding enamel and cracking.

None of it made sense to her until she discovered a community of women online who describe similar symptoms and have one thing in common: All had taken a drug called Lupron.
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Bitter, tearful testimony by children and health care providers who lost parents and patients to mold- infected medication compounded by a former Framingham drug manufacturer gave federal prosecutors one of their most powerful days yet in the rare medical murder case.

“This is the 21st century. It’s just hard to understand how this could happen in America,” Dr. Kiumarce Kashi of Maryland, his eyes red from crying, said outside U.S.
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