Surgical sponges left inside two Texas women — but undiscovered for years — will test state laws that place fairly strict time limits on suing doctors and hospitals for malpractice. One woman’s lawsuit was thrown out because the sponge, so grown over with fibrous tissue that it could not immediately…
A huge fire last year at a sugar refinery near Savannah, Ga., that killed 14 workers and injured 36 more was “entirely preventable,” a federal official said Thursday as the results of an investigation into the fire’s causes were released. The owner of the plant, the Imperial Sugar Company, and…
Wyeth’s hormone-replacement therapy drug Prempro caused an Illinois woman’s invasive breast cancer and she deserves $3.7 million, a jury decided in Philadelphia, without yet deciding whether the company was at fault and should pay her. Jurors deliberated about two hours and 15 minutes before concluding that Wyeth’s drug was a…
The bankruptcy court judge overseeing certain Chrysler assets has approved a $24 million settlement in the death of a California longshoreman run over by a Dodge pickup. The settlement comes more than two years after a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded damages of more than $55 million to the…
Women taking Yaz as a form of birth control or to treat other conditions have suffered devastating gallbladder disease, in addition to increased risks of heart attacks, stroke, and blood clots. In some cases, Yaz users have been forced to undergo painful surgeries to remove their gallbladder due to the…
YAZ (3 mg drospirenone/20 mcg ethinyl estradiol) is an oral contraceptive (OC) which is the first pill to combine 20 mcg of ethinyl estradiol (EE) with the so-called “fourth generation” progestin drospirenone (DRSP). YAZ was approved by the FDA in March 2006. A study called the International Active Surveillance Study…
A new study has found that the type of progestin used in the Yaz birth control pill is associated with more blood clots than other forms of the hormone. The study is published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Lawsuits have been filed around the U.S. by women who say…
If you take antidepressants such as fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) early in your pregnancy, you may be doubling the risk that your newborn will be born with a heart defect, according to a new study. However, the vast majority of children born to women who take such antidepressants – known…
The Institute of Medicine will study a U.S. Food and Drug administration program that gives fast-track approval to certain medical devices. Consumer watchdog groups, lawmakers and others have criticized the FDA for using the accelerated approval process for more products than Congress originally intended, leading to problems with devices after…
A Santa Clara County jury this week awarded a former college student more than $49 million in damages, finding that two truckers and state transportation officials were to blame for a 2007 accident on Highway 152 that left him permanently brain damaged. In one of the county’s largest personal injury…