Articles Posted in Product Liability

On December 11, 2013, Ikea recalled its wall-mounted lamps because the cords can be pulled into cribs creating a strangulation hazard. Tragically, a 16-month old child has died as result of strangulation from the cord and a 15-month old child was nearly strangled by the cord.

The lamps are designed for children and feature eight designs including a yellow moon, white flower, blue star, red heart, pink flower, green bug, orange seahorse and blue seashell. Nearly 3 million of the lamps were sold in the United States. 

If you own one of these lamps, stop using it immediately and contact IKEA for a free repair kit. Contact information for IKEA can be found on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s site.   And if your child has been injured by one of these IKEA lamps, contact one of our experienced product liability lawyers for a free, no-obligation consultation about your case and your rights. Call 615-742-4880 or toll-free at 866-812-8787 or contact us online.

On December 3rd, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall for Crown Boiler home heating boilers. In the event of a blockage in the vent system, the air pressure switch on the gas-fired hot water boilers can fail allowing the hot water boiler to emit an excessive amount of carbon monoxide presenting a risk of poisoning.   The Consumer Product Safety Commission provides a list of all models affected by the recall.   If you own one of the recalled hot water boilers, you should immediately contact the retailer or the manufacturer for a free repair. While you wait for the repair to be performed, be sure to install a working carbon monoxide detector in your home.

Carbon monoxide poisoning claims the life of roughly 500 people a year. For those that survive, it can also cause serious brain injuries   At The Law Offices of John Day, P.C., our experienced attorneys understand the catastrophic effects carbon monoxide poisoning can have for the victim and the entire family. We handle all carbon-monoxide cases on a contingency basis which means we only get paid if we recover money for you.   If you would like us to review your case, answer your questions and explain your rights in a no-cost, no-obligation consultation, please contact us online or call us at 615-742-4880 or toll-free at 866-812-8787.  

On July 8, 2013 the first of four back-to-back transvaginal mesh trials begins in a federal courtroom in West Virginia.  The results of these trials have implications for Tennessee women who have been injured by transvaginal mesh products inserted in them for pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence.

What do trials in West Virginia have to do with lawsuits filed by woman in Tennessee?  The trials are part of an MDL (multi-district litigation) proceeding that has collected various lawsuit filed against various transvaginal mesh manufacturers in federal courts around the country.  The result in these cases will give the manufacturers and the lawyers for the woman who have been injured an opportunity to determine how jurors truly feel about these cases and what value, if any, they assign to the harm suffered by the female patient and her spouse.  Indeed, these cases are known as "bellweather" cases – cases that are used to predict the likelihood of success in other similar cases against the mesh manufacturers.   

The results of the West Virginia trials do not legally determine the outcome of any case other than the patient and the manufacturer involved in that particular trial. Rather, they simply provide all involved with more data about how a jury evaluates the liability and damage allegations in such cases.  Thus, the outcome of these cases will have an impact on any later settlement of some 30,000 cases pending against various manufacturers of these products.

We are investigating a claim where a man had heart issues that resulted in severe heart damage and resultant disability.  As part of that investigation is was learned that a prescription antibiotic drug that he had taken, azithromycin, is now  the subject of a federal Food and Drug Admininstration (FDA) alert that the drug can can cause abnormal changes in the electrical activity of the heart that may lead to a potentially fatal irregular heart rhythm.

Azithromycin, sold under the names Zithromax or Zmax, is one of the world’s best selling antibiotics.  It is used to treat a wide variety of infections.  This drug was prescribed more than 40 million times in 2011.

The FDA’s Data Summary provides information about a recent study of the drug and its impact on the cardiovascular system.

A recent product recall is causing some families to investigate why their loved one died during dialysis treatment.

The Food and Drug Administration has ordered the recall of several products that are used during dialysis.  The drugs  have been linked to a condition known as metabolic alkalosis, which is a high serum bicarbonate level in the blood. Metabolic alkalosis can cause heart problems, cardiac arrest, stroke and death.

If your loved one died during or immediately after dialysis, it is important that you call a dialysis-death attorney as soon has possible.  Tennessee law has a very short deadline for bringing this type of case, and unless you act  promptly whatever rights you may have will be lost.

Those who have contracted fungal meningitis as a result of an epidural steroid injunction in Tennessee must file a lawsuit against the responsible parties within one year of the time they knew or reasonably should have known that they were injured by the contaminated steroid.  , 

Because the "knew or reasonably should have known" language leaves room for interpretation, those harmed by the drug should work on the assumption that the one year deadline began to run on the date the injection that caused the infection unless a fungal meningitis lawyer familiar with all of the facts advises to the contrary.  

This one-year deadline includes out-of-state residents who contracted the disease after receiving injections here, although different rules may apply depending on other facts.  No state imposes a deadline shorter than Tennessee’s one-year deadline, and therefore this is a conservation assumption to use until a lawyer familiar with all of the facts can tell you if a different deadline applies to you.

Predictably, a fungal meningitis class action lawsuit has been filed against New England Compounding Center.  The lawsuit seeks a class of people  from Minnesota – not people from other states.

I will not be particularly surprised to see such a lawsuit in Tennessee, but I predict it will not be certified as a class action.  You see, the simple filing of a class action lawsuit has little meaning.  A class action lawsuit takes on meaning only if a judge agrees that class action certification is appropriate.

To certify a class action under Tennessee law, a judge must determine that "(1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable; (2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class; (3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class; and (4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interest of the class."  This is a very hard burden to meet in personal injury and wrongful death cases.  In fact, I don’t know of single class action involving personal injury and wrongful death claims that has ever been certified by a state court in Tennessee.  (I am not saying it has never happened, but I certainly do not remember ever hearing about one in the last 30 years.)

The fungal meningitis outbreak is bringing the work of compounding pharmacies into the public eye, and many people do not like what they see.

Compounding pharmacies prepare medications that that are not readily available from a true drug manufacturer.  The number of such facilities have exploded in the last decade and now some 2000 of these pharmacies exist.  Most of them produce a relatively small number of products, but some of them, like the New England Compounding Center (NECC)  that compounded the steroid used for epidural injections that gave risk to the outbreak, are quite large.

The Wall Street Journal has  an article in today’s paper about how some doctors are thinking the use of such pharmacies.