Dallas Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Blog

May 30, 2010

Dallas Texas Accutane Lawsuit Update

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

May 29, 2010

Toyota Lawsuits in California Might Be Coordinated

by Dr. Shezad Malik

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.

May 28, 2010

For Asbestos-Ravaged Town, Questions Persist

by Dr. Shezad Malik

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

May 27, 2010

Actor Dennis Quaid Files Suit Over Heparin Drug Mix Up

by Dr. Shezad Malik

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

May 26, 2010

Federal Agency Overseeing Oil Drilling Ignored Warnings of Risks

by Dr. Shezad Malik

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

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

May 25, 2010

Slip and Fall Injury On Movie Set Leads to Lawsuit

by Dr. Shezad Malik

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

May 24, 2010

Oklahoma Revokes Doctors’ Licenses.

by Dr. Shezad Malik

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

May 23, 2010

Florida man Awarded $14 M in Asbestos Case

by Dr. Shezad Malik

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.

May 22, 2010

EPA tells BP to use less-Toxic Chemicals

by Dr. Shezad Malik

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.

May 21, 2010

Congress Raise Questions on Oil Dispersant Corexit

by Dr. Shezad Malik

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.