Dallas Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Blog

The company at the center of a massive recall of children's Tylenol and other popular over-the-counter products tried to perform a "phantom recall" of defective Motrin by sending contractors around the country to buy up the medicine from stores without alerting regulators or the public.

When faced last year with Motrin IB caplets that were not dissolving properly, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson and Johnson, hired contractors to buy the products under orders not to mention the term "recall."

After the Food and Drug Administration discovered the effort -- because one of the contractors accidentally dropped an instruction sheet on the floor of a store -- McNeil announced a recall of roughly 88,000 packages of the product.

Read the full story here at the Washington Post.

Continue reading " McNeil Consumer Healthcare Accused of Hiding Motrin Recall " »

In another setback in the effort to stem the flow of oil gushing from a well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers said that the “top kill” technique had failed and they had decided to move on to another strategy.

The abandonment of the top kill technique, was the latest in a series of failures. First, BP failed in efforts to repair a blowout preventer with submarine robots. Then its initial efforts to cap the well with a containment dome failed when it became clogged with a frothy mix of frigid water and gas.

BP has started work on two relief wells, but officials have said that they will not be completed until August — further contributing to what is already the worst oil spill in United States history.

Read the full story here at the New York Times.

Continue reading " Dallas Oil Recovery Team: BP Leak ‘Top Kill’ Fails " »

Plaintiff Andrew McCarrell was awarded $25.16 M in damages in his lawsuit against Roche Holding AG, maker of Accutane. McCarrell alleged in his lawsuit that his use of Accutane resulted in inflammatory bowel disease. McCarrell underwent five surgeries, including one to remove his colon.

According to Bloomberg on 2/16/10, McCarrell initially was awarded $2.62 M in his lawsuit, but that award was overturned and a new trial was ordered.

Accutane was introduced to the market in 1982 with a list of serious side effects including birth defects and depression. More than 13 million people reportedly used Accutane before Roche removed it from the market in June 2009, citing the cost of personal injury lawsuits.

May 22, 2010. By Heidi Turner Read full story here Lawyers and Settlements

Continue reading " Dallas Texas Accutane Lawsuit Update " »

Lawsuits in California state court against Toyota Motor Corp. related to sudden acceleration of its vehicles should be coordinated so they can be handled more efficiently, a judge said.

Judge West said he will recommend to the California Supreme Court’s chief justice that the cases be coordinated in either Los Angeles or Orange County. He also said he would recommend that the personal injury cases either proceed as a separate group before the same judge or in one group on separate tracks with the class-action lawsuits alleging economic loss.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, faces at least 228 federal and 99 state lawsuits including proposed class actions over economic loss and claims of personal injuries or deaths allegedly caused by sudden-acceleration incidents. The federal lawsuits were combined April 9, before U.S. District Judge James V. Selna in Santa Ana, California.

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

Continue reading " Toyota Lawsuits in California Might Be Coordinated " »

Health workers tracking Libby's plight estimate at least 400 people have died of asbestos-related illnesses — from W.R. Grace mine workers and family members who breathed in the dust they brought home in their clothes, to those who played as kids in waste piles dumped by the company behind the community baseball field.

Some 1,500 locals and others who were exposed have chest X-rays revealing the faint, cloudy shadows of asbestos scarring on their lungs. Even though research long showed cause for concern — up to 70 percent of miners in a 1980s study had fibers in their lungs — it took news reports about the deaths to drive officials to action, beginning a decade ago.

After the cleanup began, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency confidently predicted it would be done in two years at a cost of $5.8 million. Ten years on, the price tag has exceeded $333 million, the deaths continue, and more asbestos keeps showing up — in schools, in businesses, in hundreds of houses.

The scope of contamination has at times overwhelmed environmental regulators, dragging out the cleanup, an Associated Press review of hundreds of pages of government documents and interviews with current and former agency officials revealed.

Matthew Brown, Associated Press, Yahoo News 05/25/2010

Continue reading " For Asbestos-Ravaged Town, Questions Persist " »

Actor Dennis Quaid has filed a lawsuit against drug maker Baxter Healthcare Corp. over two easily confused drugs that, when mixed up, almost killed his twin infants.

The lawsuit claims that the blood thinner Heparin and a less potent drug, Hep-lock, have such similar labels that the two are easily confused. In late 2007, Quaid's twins were given an almost fatal dose of Heparin instead of Hep-lock at a local hospital. The lawsuit also states that the company should have recalled the Heparin because they knew that similar incidents had occurred before.

Staff and Wire Reports, Contra Costa Times 05/25/2010
Read Article: Contra Costa Times

Continue reading " Actor Dennis Quaid Files Suit Over Heparin Drug Mix Up " »

The federal agency responsible for regulating offshore oil drilling repeatedly ignored warnings from government scientists about environmental risks in its push to approve energy exploration activities quickly, according to numerous documents and interviews.

Minerals Management Service officials, who receive cash bonuses for meeting federal deadlines on leasing offshore oil and gas exploration, frequently altered their own documents and bypassed legal requirements aimed at ensuring drilling does not imperil the marine environment, the documents show. Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post 05/24/2010

Read Article: The Washington Post

http://www.shezadmalik.com/lawyer-attorney-1459578.html

Continue reading " Federal Agency Overseeing Oil Drilling Ignored Warnings of Risks " »

A Chicago man filed a lawsuit against NBC Universal Inc. over an injury he sustained while walking through the set of the movie "Public Enemies" in the streets of Chicago in 2008.

In his lawsuit, John McManus said he tripped on one of the fake rubber cobblestones installed by set designers and sustained serious injuries.

No signs, barriers or warnings existed to alert McManus to the fake stone and tracks, the lawsuit alleges. He is seeking $50,000 in damages. Serena Maria Daniels, Chicago Tribune 05/23/2010

Read Article: Chicago Tribune

Continue reading " Slip and Fall Injury On Movie Set Leads to Lawsuit " »

The Oklahoma State Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision revoked the licenses of three doctors and accepted the license surrender of an Oklahoma City surgeon who was the subject of an international controversy after a brain surgery that ended in a teenager's death.

Dr. Paul Christopher Francel has been sued for medical negligence more than 30 times from June 2000 through May 2009, board investigators wrote in a complaint against him.

Read more: http://www.newsok.com/oklahoma-doctors-lose-licenses-are-disciplined/article/3462794?custom_click=pod_headline_health#ixzz0oc7aDKqi

Continue reading " Oklahoma Revokes Doctors' Licenses. " »

A Miami-Dade jury has awarded a Sarasota man more than $14 million after deciding that the asbestos he inhaled in the 1970s caused his deadly abdominal cancer.

Jurors found that chemical giant Union Carbide was negligent for selling asbestos fibers to other companies, which had used the fibers to make joint compounds used by construction companies -- such as the one William Aubin's family owned.

Jurors also found that four of the compound manufacturers, including Georgia-Pacific, share some of the responsibility for causing Aubin's illness.

Read the full Miami Herald (5/21, Morales) report here.

Continue reading " Florida man Awarded $14 M in Asbestos Case " »

The U.S. government is ordering energy giant BP to find less-toxic chemicals to break up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill amid evidence that the dispersants are not effective and could actually make the spill more harmful to marine life.

The Environmental Protection Agency said that BP has to choose an alternative dispersant and must begin using it. So far, BP has put about 600,000 gallons of the chemical mixture Corexit 9500 on the surface and 55,000 gallons on the sea bottom.

Dispersants are toxic, and when mixed with oil can become even more dangerous than either the dispersant or oil alone, according to EPA data.

Oil treated with dispersants spreads through the water, more readily coming in contact with delicate fish eggs and other fragile sea dwellers, said Peter Hodson, a specialist in fish toxicology who is director of the School of Environmental Studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.

Read the full story here at USA Today.

The decision by BP and federal officials to use the chemical dispersant Corexit to break up oil spewing in the Gulf of Mexico is drawing fire from congress who say there are more powerful, less toxic dispersants that could be used to combat the crude.

Environmentalists have raised warnings about the risk that dispersants can be stored indefinitely in the organs and tissues of marine animals.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has acknowledged the threat in describing the use of dispersants as a trade- off between the harm of allowing oil to accumulate and the possible damage to marine life from the detergent-like substance.

Because there is uncertainty about “the long-term effects on aquatic life,” Jackson said, “we must make sure that the dispersants … are as nontoxic as possible.”

The lawmakers suggested that corporate ties between BP and the manufacturer drove the choice. JENNIFER A. DLOUHY, Houston Chronicle 05/20/2010
Read Article: Houston Chronicle

Several prominent oceanographers are claiming that the government is failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and allowing BP to block the spill’s true size and scope.

The scientists point out that in the month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, the government has failed to make public a single test result on water from the deep ocean.

And the scientists say the administration has been too reluctant to demand an accurate analysis of how many gallons of oil are flowing into the sea from the gushing oil well.

Read the full story here at the New York Times

Continue reading " U.S. Lack of Response in Assessing BP Gulf Oil Spill " »

A federal judge has issued a scheduling order for the first bellweather NuvaRing lawsuit trials in the federal Multidistrict Litigation (MDL), which involve claims filed by women who allege that side effects of the birth control ring caused them to suffer serious and potentially life-threatening blood clots.

All fact discovery for NuvaRing cases assigned to the “Phase I Trial Pool” must be completed by December 17, 2010. The judge overseeing the MDL also set a deadline of January 3, 2011, for all parties to propose expert discovery schedules in the lawsuits, suggesting that the first NuvaRing trial is unlikely to reach a jury before late 2011 or early 2012.

Continue reading " First Bellweather NuvaRing Lawsuit Trials in the Federal Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) " »

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration greatly expanded the fishing ban in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday in response to spreading oil from the BP well blowout. The prohibited area now covers 19 percent of the gulf, nearly double what it was, according to the agency.

In Washington, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appeared before Congress for the first time since the well exploded a month ago. Mr. Salazar acknowledged that the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency responsible for policing offshore drilling, had been weakened by corruption and lax enforcement of safety and environmental rules.

Read the full New York Times story here.

A Maryland woman was awarded $3.5 million by a local jury in a malpractice lawsuit over an alleged botched surgery that left her unable to walk.

Victoria Little underwent surgery for blocked arteries in 2007, and the lawsuit claims the doctors used an improper grafting technique. The surgery caused severe blood loss and injured her spine, leaving her a paraplegic.

The jury awarded $1.3 million in noneconomic damages, $2 million for future medical bills, and more than $200,000 for past medical bills.

Tricia Bishop, Baltimore Sun 05/14/2010

Read Article: Baltimore Sun

Continue reading " Md. Jury Awards Damages in Medical Malpractice Case " »

A sexual assault lawsuit against a University of Iowa anesthesiologist has been settled. In the lawsuit, Pauline Longoria claimed that Dr. Samir Haddad sexually assaulted her in his office on campus in May 2007.

Haddad claims the "sexual contact" was consensual, and the local district attorney's office has not yet decided if it will pursue criminal charges. As part of the settlement, Haddad will pay a $5,000 fine and have his medical license suspended by the Iowa Board of Medicine. Tony Leys, DesMoines Register 05/13/2010

Read Article: DesMoines Register

Continue reading " Iowa Doctor Settles Sexual Assault Lawsuit " »

A lawsuit has been filed against CVS and a Chicago store employee who allegedly strangled a man to death for shoplifting crayons and toothpaste.

Michael Johnson said in his lawsuit that an unnamed employee chased his son, Anthony Kyser, from the store and put him in a choke hold that resulted in death.

County medical examiners ruled the death a homicide, but police determined the death to be an accident. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. Staff Report, Chicago Tribune 05/12/2010

Read Article: Chicago Tribune

Continue reading " Wrongful Death Suit Filed Over Strangling Death of Shoplifter " »

Tonight's 60 minutes show on CBS, reported the harrowing story of the BP TransOcean's rig, the Deep Horizon.

As the world knows on April 20, 2010 there was a tremendous explosion on the oil rig, located some 40 miles of the Louisiana coast. In the gas explosion 11 oil rig workers lost there lives in the ensuing fire ball.

Watch the 60 Minutes segment here.

Continue reading " Devastating BP Oil Rig Explosion Survivor Tells Story on 60 Minutes " »

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well is worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Read the full story here at the New York Times.

The city has offered a record-setting $2 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a man who was killed with a Taser during a confrontation with police last year.

The City Council is scheduled to vote on the settlement according to an agenda posted online.

It's the biggest lawsuit settlement offer Fort Worth has ever had in a case involving death or injury, Assistant City Attorney Gerald Pruitt said.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/05/15/2190966/fort-worth-offers-2-million-to.html#ixzz0o74VMXhm

Continue reading " Fort Worth Offers $2 M to Settle Lawsuit over Taser Death " »

A medical malpractice lawsuit has been filed against a New York cancer specialist, claiming he treated a woman for pancreatic cancer when she in fact was not sick, and that the treatment killed her.

Giuseppa Bono went to see Dr. Gilbert Lederman on referral from an Italian doctor who, as it turns out, is not a real doctor. Lederman did not verify the diagnosis of cancer, but instead treated her immediately with radioactive therapy. Lawyers for Bono's estate also contend that Lederman and the Italian man, Salvatore Conte, were in cahoots. John Marzulli, New York Daily News 05/11/2010

Read Article: New York Daily News

A Houston judge agreed Thursday to stay pending cases against Transocean arising from the April 20 disaster that destroyed its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killed 11 workers and created a growing oil spill.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison issued an order suspending the cases against Transocean at the company's request after it sought a $26.7 million limit to its liability in the lawsuits.

Lawyers involved in the myriad lawsuits filed against Transocean, rig leaser BP and others said they had expected Transocean would attempt such a move under the Limitation of Liability Act, a maritime law that allows vessel owners to limit liability to the value of a vessel and its freight. Mary Flood, Houston Chronicle 05/14/2010

Read Article: Houston Chronicle

The Harris County Commissioner's Court approved a $167,500 settlement in a lawsuit over a woman who died while in a county jail in 2008.

The lawsuit alleged that Margarita Saavedra had begged for medical treatment from the jail staff for a staph infection in the days before she died.

She was being held in the county jail awaiting trial on drug charges when she died. Chris Moran, Houston Chronicle 05/11/2010

Read Article: Houston Chronicle

Continue reading " Harris County Settles Lawsuit Over Woman's Jail Death " »

A man who claimed that he developed severe bowel problems from Accutane, an acne medication, has reached a pre-trial settlement with Roche Laboratories, the drug’s manufacturer.

Roche has asked Madison County Circuit Judge to approve the Accutane settlement, according to a report in The Madison Record.

The plaintiff, Peipert alleges that Dr. Daniel Goran prescribed him Accutane to treat his acne, and that the drug caused him to develop the debilitating condition, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The case was set to go to trial on April 19, but start of the trial was delayed due the potential settlement with Accutane manufacturers.

Continue reading " Accutane Lawsuit Settled on eve of Trial " »

Popular birth control pills taken by millions of women might be causing serious side effects, that in some cases have led to death. That's the claim of a growing number of lawsuits.

Yaz and its sister drug Yasmin are big sellers marketed to women under 35. Hormones in all birth control pills can cause blood to thicken, but there are more than 1,000 lawsuits saying Yaz and Yasmin cause more blood clots than others.

Read the full story here

Scientists and environmental groups are raising questions about 5,000 gallons per day estimate. They also criticize BP for refusing to use scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure.

BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume of oil gushing from the broken well would be impossible.

The issue of how fast the well is leaking has been unclear from the beginning. For several days after the April 21 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, the government and BP claimed that the well on the ocean floor was leaking about 1,000 barrels a day.

Read the full New York Times story here.

An Oklahoma City jury has ordered Allergan Inc., the maker of Botox Cosmetic, to pay $15 million to a local doctor who claimed she suffered botulism poisoning from the product.

Dr. Sharla Helton claimed in her lawsuit that the illness she suffered as a result of Botox injections in 2006 caused her to quit her job. The jury said they ruled against Allergan Inc. because their Botox product did not have adequate information about side affects on its warning label. Nolan Clay, NewsOK.com 05/12/2010

Read Article: NewsOK.com

Continue reading " OK Jury Finds Botox Maker Negligent, Awards $15 M " »

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Baxter Healthcare Services were ordered to pay a combined $500 million in punitive damages to a Nevada man who contracted Hepatitis C during an outbreak two years ago.

The Clark County District Court jury in Nevada ordered Teva to pay $356 million and Baxter to pay $144 million in the largest jury award in Nevada history.

Read full Reuters story here.

Continue reading " Teva & Baxter Ordered to Pay $500 M in Hep C Case " »

Atmos Energy failed to meet minimum safety regulations in connection with a home explosion in Mesquite, according to a state investigation.

The Texas Railroad Commission investigation found that Atmos should phase out the type of steel natural gas lines used in the area. The company has decided to replace each of the 680 lines in the area of Town East Estates subdivision.

Read the full story at the Dallas Morning News.

Continue reading " Atmos Responsible for Multiple Violations in Blast at Mesquite Texas Home " »

After BP’s Texas City, Tex., refinery blew up in 2005, killing 15 workers, the company promised to fix the safety issues that caused the blast.

In 2006 a oil pipeline ruptured and spilled 200,000 gallons of crude oil over Alaska’s North Slope, the oil giant once again vowed to fix the problems.

In 2007, BP settled a series of criminal charges, including Texas City, and agreed to pay $370 million in fines.

Read the full story at the New York Times.

Continue reading " BP's Poor Record: History of Spills and Safety Lapses " »

The effort to contain the oil spill that has poured millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico encountered a setback, according to officials. This means that oil will continue gushing into the ocean for possibly months.

Workers earlier maneuvered a containment dome over the remaining leaks on the seabed to funnel the oil to the surface, where it would be collected by a drill ship.

Read the full story here at the New York Times.

Continue reading " Attempt to Contain Gulf Oil Spill Plagued With Problems " »

Oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico came ashore on a chain of islands off the Louisiana coast today as the Obama administration accused BP Plc and its agents of making "very major mistakes" in the negligent drilling operation.

BP engineers were to lower a huge metal chamber over the ruptured seabed well, which has been gushing oil a huge amount per day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded two weeks ago off the Louisiana Coast, killing 11 workers.

Read the full Reuters story here.

Continue reading " BP Oil From Gulf Spill Lands in Louisiana " »

In the worst case, the disaster could grow at 12 times the rate of current estimates, BP officials say at a Capitol Hill briefing.

BP officials told congressional representatives that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could grow at a rate more than 10 times current estimates in a worst-case scenario — greatly enlarging the potential scope of the disaster.

Most of the handful of congressional Democrats and Republicans who met with representatives from BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill walked away unimpressed.

Read full LA Times story here.

Continue reading " BP Gives Gloomy Outlook on Gulf Oil Spill " »

With each day that the leaking oil well a mile below the surface remains uncapped, scientists and energy industry observers are imagining outcomes that range from bad to worse to worst, with some forecasting a calamity of historic proportions.

Executives from oil giant BP and other energy companies, meanwhile, shared their own worst-case scenario in a Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers, saying that if they fail to close the well, the spill could increase from an estimated 5,000 barrels a day to 40,000 barrels.

Read the full Washington Post Story here.

Continue reading " After Gulf Coast Oil Spill, Devastation Predicted For Region " »

Where the world runs out of road and into bayou, and all that is left beyond is the Gulf of Mexico, dozens of docked shrimp boats bob in place. They should be out right now, green nets trawling for cash in crustaceans.

Among these many boats — actually, between the Capt. Andy and the Capt. James — there rocks the St. Martin. And on the St. Martin, there lives its owner, a Vietnamese-born American named Thuong Nguyen, whose right forearm bears a tattoo that says, in his native language:

“Life is difficult.”

Read the full New York Times story here.

Continue reading " At the End of the Road Hwy 23: Dallas Oil Recovery Team " »

The government ordered a halt on Sunday to fishing in areas affected by the ever-spreading oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, a ban that covers waters from Louisiana to Florida and hinders the livelihoods of untold numbers of fishermen.

Citing public safety concerns, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration restricted fishing for at least 10 days in the affected waters, largely between Louisiana state waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River to waters off Pensacola Bay in Florida. Scientists were taking samples of water and seafood to ensure food safety.

Read the full New York Times story here.

Continue reading " Safety Fears Halt Fishing in Areas Affected by Spill " »

BP's chief executive is coming under mounting pressure over the vast spill spreading in the Gulf of Mexico, which was caused when a giant drilling rig there caught fire and sank, with the loss of 11 crew members. The oil, still spewing from the well on the ocean floor, threatens to blacken the Louisana shoreline, and BP's reputation.

When Mr. Hayward took over BP's leadership three years ago, the company was badly run, accident-prone and accused in the aftermath of a deadly explosion at its Texas City refinery of putting profits before safety.

None of that seems to matter now, as BP heads into the crisis grinder. And with about 5,000 barrels of oil leaking from the damaged well each day.

Read the full WSJ story here.

Continue reading " BP's Worsening Spill Crisis " »

The world’s most endangered species of sea turtle is threatened by an oil slick that’s expanding in the Gulf of Mexico as 5,000 barrels a day of fuel gushes from a BP Plc well.

The Kemp’s Ridley turtle only nests in the western Gulf of Mexico, with one of its main feeding grounds in the area of the oil spill, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website. The species is critically endangered, the highest degree of threat on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List.”

“Oil cannot be good for these animals because it’s toxic and can kill them,” Andre Landry, a marine biologist who runs the Sea Turtle and Fisheries Ecology Research Lab at Texas A&M University at Galveston. Oil nearing shore waters “will affect Kemp’s Ridleys from juveniles through to adults as well as their food and habitats.”

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

Continue reading " World’s Most Endangered Sea Turtle Threatened by BP Oil Slick " »

Scott Wilson, a 23-year-old civil engineer, was killed while driving to his mother's house in Wellington when his Hyundai Sonata was struck by a black Bentley driven by wealthy polo club owner John Goodman.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office is still investigating whether Goodman, the founder of the International Polo Club Palm Beach, should face any criminal charges. Scott Wilson's father and his mother, Lili Wilson, filed wrongful-death lawsuits against Goodman.

Read the full story here.

Continue reading " Family to File Wrongful Death Lawsuit Over Fatal Palm Beach Car Crash " »

Oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico unabated Saturday, and officials conveyed little hope that the flow could be contained soon, forcing towns along the Gulf Coast to brace for what is increasingly understood to be an imminent environmental disaster.

The spill, emanating from a pipe 50 miles offshore and 5,000 feet underwater, was creeping into Louisiana’s fragile coastal wetlands as strong winds and rough waters hampered cleanup efforts. Officials said the oil could hit the shores of Mississippi and Alabama as soon as Monday.

The White House announced that President Obama would visit the region on Sunday morning.

Read the full New York Times story here.

Continue reading " Gulf Coast Towns Brace as Huge Oil Slick Nears Marshes: Dallas Texas Oil Spill Recovery Team-Update 4 " »

An oil spill that threatened to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control and started washing ashore along the Gulf Coast as fishermen rushed to scoop up shrimp and crews spread floating barriers around marshes.

The spill was bigger than imagined — five times more than first estimated — and closer. Fingers of oily sheen were reaching the Mississippi River delta, lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines.

Read the full story here.

Continue reading " 'Mind-boggling' oil spill in Gulf could eclipse Exxon Valdez disaster: Dallas Texas Oil Spill Recovery Team-Update 3 " »

Teams of lawyers from around the nation are mobilizing for legal battles over the massive Gulf Coast oil spill, filing at least 26 potential class action lawsuits.

Attorneys say there could be hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs from Texas to Florida seeking damages. Plaintiffs so far include commercial fishermen, charter boat captains, resort management companies and individual property owners.

Plaintiffs in class-action cases seek to represent an entire group of people in similar situations who claim economic losses due to company negligence.

The lawsuits target BP PLC, Transocean and other companies involved in the offshore rig that exploded in the Gulf and began leaking oil.

Read the full AP story here.

Continue reading " Lawyers Flock to Gulf Coast For Oil Spill Lawsuits: Dallas Texas Oil Spill Recovery Team-Update 2 " »

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who directed relief efforts in the gulf after Katrina, says that it’s impossible to estimate the size of the oil slick and that his priority is on stopping its spread.

The new top commander heading the fight against a massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico said on Saturday that it was impossible to estimate the size of the leak pouring into the water.

Allen's comments come as academics and consultants say the size of the leak is growing and is perhaps three times larger than previously thought. The amount of oil leaked may already be about 10 million gallons and growing. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was about 11 million gallons.

Read the full story here at the Los Angeles Times

Continue reading " Dallas Oil Spill Recovery Team: New Federal Commander Fights Against BP Oil Leaks " »

As a personal injury attorney, medical doctor and concerned environmentalist I have decided to team up with my very good friend, Spencer Aronfeld of the Aronfeld Law Firm. Today we are going to the Gulf Coast to assess for ourselves first hand the impact of this environmental catastrophe.

What will follow over the next few days will be dispatches from the front lines; first hand cataloging of the damage. We are hopeful that with pictures and video of the devastating damage we can start a discussion and have people think about the downside of oil.

Continue reading " Dallas Texas Oil Spill Recovery Team-Update 1 " »

Driven deep into Gulf Coast waterways by wind and seasonally high tides, the spreading oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon accident could cause serious ecological and wildlife-health consequences long after signs of surface damage have been erased.

Independent studies of several major oil spills, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident, show that oil often reaches farther into tidal estuaries than previously thought and can soak into shoreline sediment where it can continue to affect fish and wildlife for 10 or 20 years.

In the aftermath of offshore oil spills in Alaska, Massachusetts and Spain, researchers discovered long-term effects on shellfish, crabs, seabirds, whales and sea otters years after the accidents. The problems ranged from altered blood chemistry and higher levels of stress hormones to erratic behavior, contaminated eggs and long-term population declines.

Read the full story here at the Wall Street Journal

Continue reading " Threats to Wildlife Often Linger Long After Accidents " »

Frank Campo thinks the oil spill approaching the marshes east of New Orleans may destroy his community.

Campo, who runs Campo’s Marina in St. Bernard Parish’s Shell Beach, says the response to the spill is too little and too late to prevent economic disaster for the commercial and recreational fishermen who earn a living from the coast.

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

Continue reading " Oil Spill’s ‘Fisheries Failure’ May Signal End of Coastal Towns " »

We blogged on Thursday about the initial lawsuits getting filed over the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Those suits, however, are likely to turn out to represent just the tip of the iceberg in regard to the legal trouble likely facing a host of defendants, including BP, Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling, and others.

Read the full WSJ story here.

Continue reading " Guessing the Feds’ Response to the BP Oil Rig Explosion " »

The results of a new study found that the side effects of Accutane, an acne drug that is also known as generic isotretinoin, increases the risk of developing inflammatory bowel problems.

The study, conducted by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, was published March 30 in the American Journal of Gastroenterology. Researchers say they found that the use of Accutane increased the risk of developing ulcerative colitis by a factor of four.

Researchers looked at data from 87 health insurance plans and found nearly 8,200 people who had been diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), that includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

Researchers found that those taking Accutane were four times more likely to develop ulcerative colitis, and they also determined that the chance of developing the bowel disorder increased in relation to the Accutane dosage, strengthening the evidence of a causal relationship.

Continue reading " Accutane Side Effects Quadruple Risk of Ulcerative Colitis " »

As oil edged toward the Louisiana coast, fears continued to grow that the leak from the seabed oil well could spiral out of control. One official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the oil flow could grow from the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day to “an order of magnitude higher than that.”

BP officials said they did everything possible, and a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP, which was leasing the drilling rig that exploded in flames on April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead.

Read the full New York Times.

Continue reading " BP Is Criticized Over Toxic Oil Spill " »