Personal Injury Resources

I want to express my deepest gratitude to America’s trial lawyers, especially those kings of torts who initiate class action suits to rescue injured parties like myself from any responsibilities for my lousy decisions. You see, during the big investment bubble of 1999-2000, when stock values went only one direction—up—I took a small position in two can’t-miss stars: WorldCom and Global Crossing. Well, guess what? Both stocks tanked, and the executives of both companies were charged with ethical malfeasance.

The recent Vioxx recall underscores the importance of carefully considering your health conditions and potential side effects before taking any medication.

It seems the FDA is taking a slow and cautious route on new approvals, especially after the Vioxx withdrawal, as we noted before. In April, the FDA ordered new warnings on all antipsychotic drugs, including Risperdal, to alert physicians to a higher death rate when the medicines are prescribed for the atypical use of treating dementia in elderly patients.

Would you really want your name associated with this lawsuit?

More than 400,000 customers of a Canadian company that sells penis-enlargement products may be eligible to join a lawsuit claiming the oils and herbal supplements don't work, a Denver federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Regular Capsules readers probably have noticed the numerous links to articles, reports, and research that suggests the "evidence" we base the gold standard on may itself be tainted, between pharma-paid ghostwriters for journal articles, to the Vioxx studies that were cherry-picked to show only the best results, to the basic question of pharma’s funding of clinical trials. And does the trend toward the offshoring of clinical trials affect their relevancy as evidence on which to place recommendations for U.S. populations?

After two notorious recent incidents (the removal of Vioxx and the use of anti-depressants in children) there have been allegations that drug manufacturers withheld data that indicated the possibility of safety problems from academic researchers.

A federal judge told dozens of lawyers crowded into a courtroom here Monday that there could ultimately be up to 100,000 cases filed against Merck & Co. over its now withdrawn pain reliever Vioxx, and that he could hear a case as early as the fall.

Aspirin has seen a resurgence in recent months after the recall of painkillers such as Vioxx and Bextra. Doctors and patients have in many cases reverted to the "little white pill" for its proven reliability.

Understandably, sufferers and their families want to see some form of compensation for the pain, suffering, and misery caused by asbestos and mesothelioma. Although no amount of money can make up for the damage done by unprotected asbestos exposure, it can help to pay for medical costs, and can also provide the sufferer’s family with a more financially secure future.

Your two pieces from Maria Cattaui and Pat Choate bemoaning the state of IP protection and the nations of scofflaws who are stealing people's ideas and getting away with billions are passionate, but about as monocular as you can get. At no point do either of your commentators acknowledge the fact that IP protections are broken and have been grossly abused by those who demand their protection.

Maria raises the spectre of contaminated knock-off drugs, without commenting on the egregious behaviour of the producers of Vioxx and Celebrex whose commitment to the profits generated by their precious IP transcends the lives of the people taking them, nor does she deal with the cynical tweaking of drugs about to fall into the public domain purely for the purpose of denying access to others rather than engaging their innovative resources to bring online new ones.

Really disturbing piece on Merck’s promoting of Vioxx, downplaying the heart risks. A shame. I used to think Merck was one of the more ethical of the drug companies.

Wow … this is really going to be a ramble! Fast forward to age 49 when just by chance I end up going to a pulmonary specialist as a primary care physician who routinely administers pulmonary function tests to all patients…regardless. I felt fine; I had no problems breathing but the PFT showed COPD – Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease. The good doc says, “You’ve gotta quit smoking.” I didn’t want to do it! I thought I enjoyed it! And then the governor of the state raised the taxes on cigarettes to help pay for Pennsylvania doctors’ medical malpractice insurance. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back! Since I felt fine, I couldn’t accept the doctor’s advice; but when it hit my pocket book – I took a good, hard look at it and decided it was time to give it up.

Vermont physicians believe the cost of medical malpractice insurance recently approved by a state regulatory agency spells trouble for both local doctors and their patients.

I believe that at the heart of these initiatives lies the specter of Orwell, where society attempts to control the behavior of its' citizens by legislative fiat. What comes next after smoking? My guess is obesity; I am already going to the gym more! After that, alcohol is next; that will be a fight. But after all, alcohol kills millions in car accidents, many more via liver disease and the occasional bar fight, doesn't it? Someone will come up with statistics showing the gazillions of dollars that we will save by not...

More important to me is the system used for evaluating workman's compensation. Is someone is in charge of looking at individual abuses? If an individual continually appears to be more accident prone than the rest, I would like to know if there is a program in place to evaluate that person's performance. Sounds to me, from reading the interview that this position is on the cutting blocks and the responsibility will be shared and spread out among other employees. I hope they can work together to find extreme, individual abuse.

Just as the title says. AP reporting that the first vioxx case to go to trial might be set in Texas for July 11.

Bextra is part of a class of drugs known as COX-2 inhibitors that also includes Pfizer's drug Celebrex and Merck & Co Inc.'s Vioxx, which was withdrawn last year due to increased risks of heart attack and stroke.

First we learn that Vioxx increases the risk of heart attacks. Now, we learn that Merck may have had research, as early as 2000, that uncovered these problems, but didn’t make it known to the public. It is time to end this secrecy.

From the Washington Post, via ThinkProgress, comes an article about Merck, the maker of Vioxx, which "was withdrawn from the market last September after another clinical trial found that people who had taken the drug for 18 months were five times more likely to have heart attacks and strokes than those on a placebo."

"Merck & Co.'s longtime leader Raymond V. Gilmartin abruptly resigned yesterday on the same day congressional investigators released a slew of documents detailing how the company continued to aggressively promote its arthritis drug Vioxx after it knew of potentially serious safety concerns.

The documents made public by the House Committee on Government Reform showed that Merck directed its 3,000-person Vioxx sales force to avoid discussions with doctors about the cardiovascular risks identified in a major clinical trial of the drug in 2000. Sales representatives were told instead to rely on a "Cardiovascular Card" that said Vioxx was protecting the heart rather than potentially harming it. (...)

"They were trained how to smile, speak and position themselves most effectively when talking with doctors, and were exhorted to sell Vioxx and other Merck drugs using the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Vioxx: Now With Soul Force!:

This has perverse consequences. According to the Institute of Medicine, a non-governmental organisation in Washington, DC, preventable medical errors--from unplanned drug interactions, say--kill between 44,000 and 98,000 people each year in America alone. This makes medical snafus the eighth leading cause of death, ahead of car accidents, breast cancer and AIDS. "It's like crashing two 747s a day," says Mark Blatt, who was a family doctor for 20 years before he joined Intel, the world's

Jim Garvin has a good post on the regulation of medical malpractice insurance (see here). Our experience in the specialty lines market is that freedom from rate and form regulation (ie the surplus lines) provides significantly greater liquidity in the market than the segment of the market requiring rate and form filings (the admitted market).

All of you know about Vioxx, which caused an estimated 88,000 to 139,000 heart attacks and strokes. But it and related painkillers such as Bextra and Celebrex were not a problem for Tauzin. Nor for his successor, Joe Barton. The FDA, Barton has declared, should make no more rulings on the effectiveness of drugs; rather, it should confine itself to measuring whether they are "safe, pure, and packaged safely."

Early last year in the Senate, in startling contrast, Charles Grassley broke from the Republican pack. The chairman of the Finance Committee undertook tough oversight of the FDA, notably including its handling of childhood antidepressants and Vioxx and related painkillers. Moreover, Grassley served notice that he'd protect the FDA's internal whistleblowers, such as medical officer David Graham, who had called Vioxx a "profound regulatory failure" by an agency "incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx."

If over the past dozen years Capitol Hill had properly overseen the FDA, and if the press had seriously and consistently reported on this nonfeasance, would the agency have rushed as it did to release, and not rushed to pull back, the 13 killer drugs, Vioxx, and the rest? Could there be a reasonable doubt that many thousands of Americans would not have been gravely or fatally harmed?

I'm just saying, how can you have an honest discussion about medical malpractice reform without addressing those real errors made by doctors. There's a mentality that permeates the medical profession whereby decent doctors are reluctant to point out mistakes made by other doctors. That's where I see a need for reform. Any reform that doesn't include that just looks doctors seeking.... well, I don't even want to say.

Legal reform doesn't preclude medical reform. But right now, the legal system is sufficiently inaccurate with respect to medical malpractice that any improvements in the medical system wouldn't fix the problem of the costs imposed by the legal system. It's almost an entirely separate issue.

Poor communication and mismanaged expectations between doctors and patients are chief among the forces behind the rapidly increasing number of medical malpractice lawsuits. In an effort to help health care providers lower the incidence and severity of malpractice claims, Aon has partnered with Rightfield Solutions, LLC, to offer Emmi, a cutting-edge patient education and communication system.

"We’ve been getting our butts kicked since 7 a.m. this morning," admits David Gay, R.N. "It’s the icy roads; we had a number of car accidents. There were more police officers here at 11 a.m. than nurses."

Chest pain and dyspnea are the most common symptoms of pleural mesothelioma.(15,16) The chest pain is characteristically nonpleuritic and varies in intensity from mild to incapacitating. Constitutional symptoms such as fever, weight loss and weakness are not uncommon. Despite the proven link between asbestos and mesothelioma, fewer than 50 percent of studied patients relate a definite history of asbestos exposure. This low figure may simply be a matter of inaccurate histories in persons with a disease that has a 20- to 50-year latency period or may reflect exposure to various dusts or chemicals presently unrecognized as etiologic factors, unrecognized incidental exposure or other etiologic mechanisms.

The discovery last year that the painkillers Vioxx and Celebrex may increase the risk of heart problems wasn't just a disappointment to people with chronic pain and the doctors who treat them. The news has threatened to cut off a promising arm of research in cancer prevention.

A state court judge has ordered Vioxx manufacturer Merck & Co. to begin settlement talks with the widow of an Alabama man who blames the pain medication for her husband's death.

Shorewest Realtors, a huge advertiser with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel over the past several years has filed a class action law suit against Journal Sentinel Inc. and they are inviting other advertisers to join in the suit. They are claiming that the the paper has inflated it’s paid circulation numbers since 1996.

[…] circulation, fearful of more backlash from advertisers. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is fighting off a class action law suit from it’s advertisers, who are alleging that Journal Communications h […]

Also disturbing: recordings of Enron's traders on the sales floor knowingly creating a false enery crisis in California in order to inflate the cost of electricity by nine times over its original cost. The traders cackle over the phone about bilking "grandma Millie" out of her retirement money while ordering California electrical workers to close down plants for "repairs," thus increasing the cost of electricity. Footage of car accidents caused by broken traffic lights due to electrical outages are chilling, with one remorseful trader later admitting...

In many personal injury cases, like car accidents or slip and falls, a person is hurt, incurs medical bills, gets better, and moves on with life. The cost of that victim's care is usually paid because it is all finished.