Personal Injury

March 30, 2011

Mesothelioma And Asbestos Update

Lung Cancer, Mesothelioma and Asbestos Exposure

This article is one in a series of articles that I am writing as a Dallas Mesothelioma Attorney to educate folks about the man made toxins in the environment. Mesothelioma is called a “signature” disease—which indicates that the person was exposed to the causative agent. If someone has mesothelioma, they were almost certainly exposed to asbestos.

Mesothelioma rates continue to climb and by some estimates is set to peak around 2012-2015. Asbestos has been placed in many buildings as a fire retardant and insulator and now because of the long latency period, many contractors, pipe fitters and plumbers are coming down with the disease, some including folks who had exposure as long as 30-40 years ago. What a national tragedy.

Lung cancer, is a multi-factorial disease—Environmental factors are important in lung cancer causation. Lung cancer is cancer that starts in the lungs.

There are two main types of lung cancer:

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung cancer.

Small cell lung cancer makes up about 20% of all lung cancer cases. If the lung cancer is made up of both types, it is called mixed small cell/large cell cancer.

If the cancer started somewhere else in the body and spread to the lungs, it is called metastatic cancer to the lung.

The most important environmental factor is smoking. Asbestos exposure is important risk for development of lung cancer. Exposure to asbestos increases your risk of developing cancer—by an average of five times the risk of a non-smoker who was not exposed to asbestos.

Smoking makes a person ten times more likely to develop lung cancer. But for someone who smokes and was also exposed to asbestos, the risk of developing lung cancer is 50 times higher.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has included construction workers (including plumbers, electricians, painters and other construction-related trades), demolition workers, shipyard workers, firefighters and automobile mechanics among those at risk for dangerous asbestos exposures.

See NCI Asbestos Fact Sheet.

March 30, 2011

Fosamax Femur Fracture MDL Lawsuits

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Fosamax Femur Fracture attorney, I am providing this update regarding Merck’s application for an MDL.

Merck has filed a petition for MDL (multidistrict litigation) to consolidate and centralize all federal Fosamax bone fracture lawsuits for handling during pretrial litigation.

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More than 900 Fosamax lawsuits against Merck have already been consolidated as part of an MDL in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; those involved claims that Fosamax caused jaw injury, known as osteonecrosis. There are now Fosamax suits filed by folks who have suffered a femur fracture or other bone fracture after taking the osteoporosis drug.

On March 23, Merck asked the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) to create a new MDL for this type of injuries caused by Fosamax, where plaintiffs claim that long-term use of Fosamax increases the risk of low-trauma or no-trauma fractures, involving the femur or thigh bone.

The FDA added warnings about the risk of bone fractures from Fosamax and other bisphosphonate medications in October 2010, requiring drug makers to warn consumers that they should seek immediate medical attention if they experience new groin pain or thigh pain while taking the drug, which can occur weeks or months before a complete fracture of the femur on Fosamax occurs.

More than 100 people have filed a Fosamax bone fracture lawsuit, alleging that Merck failed to adequately research their medication or provide adequate warnings before they suffered a femur fracture or bone break. The claims are contained in 36 complaints that have been filed in at least 8 different federal district courts throughout the United States.

Merck has asked the U.S. Judicial Panel to centralize and consolidate the Fosamax bone fracture litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, where most of the cases are currently pending and where the drug maker has its headquarters. In the alternative, Merck requested that the Panel transfer the cases to the U.S. District for the Western District of Louisiana.

Bone fracture lawsuits were excluded from the prior Fosamax MDL, which was established in August 2006 for claims filed by individuals who suffered decay of the jaw bone from Fosamax.

A popular osteoporosis drug, Fosamax® and its generic form Alendronate®, is implicated to cause spontaneous fractures.

Fosamax® is a drug used to strengthen bones, for many women it has worked successfully but according to medical reports, women who have taken the drug for five years are at risk of suffering spontaneous fractures.

Doctors are seeing many femurs fractured in patients who have been on the drug. If you have taken Fosamax® or its generic form Alendronate® and believe to have been injured as a result, please fill out the form below to contact a Case Manager.

March 29, 2011

Texas Joshua School District Sued For Bullying Wrongful Death

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Dallas Personal Injury Wrongful Death Attorney I am outraged and saddened at this tragic Cleburne school bullying death case.

Now I known and have witnessed first hand bullying in school and in colleges. And as we can see bullying exerts a tremendous toll on the psychological and physical well being of our youth. For too long the teachers and the school personnel with whom we entrust our kids, have a “I don’t care attitude.” They have to do a better job.

In Texas most teachers and principals have a “don’t give a damn attitude” because of sovereign immunity under the Texas Tort Claim Act.

Hopefully this attitude will be majorly adjusted once the school districts have to shell out large significant money damages and which hits them in their pocket book. Charging individuals, such as teachers, principals and district superintendents would be significant to school bullying cases because it might change behavior. This is unfortunately the only language negligent people understand. My condolences and prayers are with the Carmichael family, and I hope they are successful in their case.

A federal lawsuit filed in Dallas alleges the Joshua school district and several school officials of violating the civil rights of 13-year-old Jon Carmichael by ignoring repeated acts of bullying against him.

The suit was filed by Carmichael’s parents and seeks damages and compensation for his estate and heirs.

The lawsuit alleges school employees failed to intervene when he was bullied in physical education class and when he was thrown into a dumpster. In another incident, students saw that his head was placed upside down in a toilet and “flushed several times.”

“Just prior to his death, he was stripped nude, tied up and again placed into a trashcan,” according to the lawsuit. “The event was videotaped, put on YouTube but was later taken down.”

According to Martin Cirkiel of Round Rock, Carmichael’s attorney, the school personnel knew about many of the bullying incidents, then ignored or covered up other ones they didn’t see firsthand.

The lawsuit also accuses school staff members of telling a student who had a video of the assault to destroy it and says Carmichael’s personal journal has been “knowingly destroyed, withheld or purposefully hidden by staff, as well.”

Carmichael hanged himself in a barn near his family home in Cleburne. He was the second Johnson County teenager to kill himself in six months. In both cases, families attributed the deaths partially to bullying. In October 2009, Hunter Layland, a 15-year-old freshman at Cleburne High School, shot himself.

Joshua school policy requires principals or appointees to investigate reports of bullying within 10 days. But the lawsuit says those policies weren’t followed as “school district personnel clearly had an actual practice and custom of looking the other way.”

March 28, 2011

McDonald’s Employee Sex Exposure Suit Settled

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Dallas Sex Abuse Personal Injury Attorney, I am glad to report this sex abuse case with a good outcome.

What is the world coming to, when you cannot even go to a local burger joint with your kids?

A settlement has been reached in a suit filed against a Florida McDonald’s after an employee exposed himself to a young female customer inside the restaurant. A sex offender with an extensive criminal history — including repeated arrests on suspicion of exposing himself — was arrested after he was caught touching himself in front of a girl inside a Seminole County McDonald’s where he was working.

The incident eventually led to a guilty conviction for Robert Jonathan Walyus, and the victim’s filing a lawsuit against him, McDonald’s Corp. and the local-franchise owner.

The lawsuit claimed proper hiring supervision rules were not in place, allowing the restaurant to hire a sex offender with an extensive criminal history.

The suit claimed the incident caused the young girl to have anxiety attacks and an inability to main normal relationships with males. The terms of the settlement were undisclosed.

March 27, 2011

Darvocet, Darvon, and Propoxyphene Wrongful Death Consolidation

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Texas Darvocet and Darvon Recall Attorney, I am providing this update regarding the request for consolidation of the litigation in federal court.

This week, a panel of federal judges will hear arguments to consolidate a growing number of Darvocet and Darvon lawsuits that have been filed over cardiac sudden death problems allegedly caused by these medications.

Plaintiffs first requested the consolidation in December, now some Darvocet lawyers expect that thousands are cases are likely to be filed by victims diagnosed with a heart arrythmia or sudden heart-related death from side effects of the medication.

In December, plaintiff Kristine Esposito, filed a Motion with the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation seeking to have the Darvon and Darvocet litigation centralized in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Other plaintiffs have filed documents known as briefs, requesting that the cases be consolidated in either the Eastern District of Louisiana or Western District of Louisiana.

The plaintiffs want to have the cases consolidated in one court, since all of the Darvon and Darvocet suits contain similar allegations that the manufacturer failed to adequately research the side effects of Darvocet and Darvon and failed to warn doctors and patients that propoxyphene-based drugs caused heart rhythm problems.

These type of consolidation is similar to class actions, and are known as an MDL, or multidistrict litigation.This type of centralization is usual in complex product liability claims involving a large number of lawsuits over injuries associated with a particular product. The process is designed to avoid duplicative discovery, prevent inconsistent rulings by different judges and to promote the efficient litigation, both in time and cost.

Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the name-brand versions of Darvon and Darvocet, has opposed consolidation of the litigation.

If the MDL Panel grants consolidation and determines that is appropriate in the litigation over Darvocet and Darvon, Xanodyne will argue that the cases should be centralized in the Eastern District of Kentucky. Xanodyne, the drug maker is headquartered in Kentucky.

March 26, 2011

Topamax Seizure Drug Causes Birth Defects

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Texas Topamax Dangerous Drug attorney, I am providing this latest FDA warning regarding Topamax.

This latest announcement by the FDA (see below) is particularly worrisome, as it demonstrates the teratogenic side effects of Topamax and the generic versions of this commonly utilized drug.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning about Topamax (topiramate), an anticonvulsant medication which is used in the prevention of migraine headaches and epileptic seizures. New medical study shows that Topamax and its generic versions increases the rate of cleft lip and cleft palate deformities if taken by women who are pregnant.

Cleft lip and cleft palate deformities are holes in the roof of the mouth that result from improper fusing of the lip and the palate during fetal development during pregnancy. The mouth birth defects can cause problems with eating and talking if not treated with surgery.

Product labeling for Topamax cautions about the risk of birth defects associated with the medication, but the warning label will now be revised to include stronger language that there is “positive evidence of human fetal risk based on human data.”

Cleft lip and palate is very treatable; however, the kind of treatment depends on the type and severity of the cleft.

Most children with a form of clefting are monitored by a cleft palate team or craniofacial team through young adulthood. Treatment procedures can vary between craniofacial teams. For example, some teams wait on jaw correction until the child is aged 10 to 12 (argument: growth is less influential as deciduous teeth are replaced by permanent teeth, thus saving the child from repeated corrective surgeries), while other teams correct the jaw earlier (argument: less speech therapy is needed than at a later age when speech therapy becomes harder).

Still prevention is better than the cure, so best avoid the use of Topamax during pregnancy or if cannot, then use contraceptive devices.

March 24, 2011

Wrongful Death Suit Filed After Man Murdered Outside of Bar

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Dallas Wrongful Death attorney, I am providing this lawsuit article from Cleveland.

The family of a Cleveland man who was gunned down in 2009 during a robbery at a local bar have filed a lawsuit against the building owners and the security company.

The wrongful death suit claims local security officers did nothing to stop a group of men from attempting to rob Jeremy Pechanec and eventually executing him and a friend in a park across from the bar.

None of the bar’s security cameras were on, the suit claims, and bar tenders continued to serve the men even as they began to harass Pechanec. The wrongful death lawsuit is seeking more than $100,000 in damages.

What is a Wrongful Death Lawsuit? Dallas Wrongful Death Attorney explains

A wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the victim was killed as a result of negligence on the part of the person or business entity being sued, and that the victim’s survivors are entitled to monetary damages as a result of the negligent act and improper conduct.

This type of legal civil claim is different from a normal negligence lawsuit, which is filed by the person injured for the resultant damages. Originally under “common law” (the general legal principles or judge made law, passed from England to the United States over many years), a wrongful death claim did not exist based upon the legal reasoning that the claim died or was extinguished with the victim where there was no way to compensate him for damages. The surviving family members then could not claim damages from the person who caused the victim’s death. This was an injustice for the dead victim’s family and a legal loop hole.

Topamax & Topiramate Usage Can Cause Birth Defects

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Dallas Topamax Cleft Palate Cleft Lip Attorney warns about the side effects of Topamax during pregnancy.

As I have previously reported, the FDA has required the makers of Topamax and generic topiramate to update their warning label regarding use of the Topamax drug during pregnancy. The usage of Topamax during pregnancy, can cause children to be born with a cleft lip or cleft palate. And shockingly enough, it appears that this particular birth defect information has been available for years and that Topamax birth defect side effects may cause malformations. Folks, the manufacturers have failed to adequately research their medication or warn consumers and doctors.

The medical journal Neurology, in July 2008, reported that pregnant women who received Topamax for epilepsy treatment, faced an increased incidence of babies with birth defects or congenital malformations. Topamax use during pregnancy was linked to babies born with cleft lip or cleft palate at a rate 11 times higher than would be expected in the general population and babies born with genital defects at a rate 14 times higher than would be expected.

Apparently this research and other post-marketing data was available to the Topamax manufacturers, and they failed to warn women about the risks of pregnancy and Topamax. If proper warnings was provided, these women could have chosen to take a different drug or taken contraception to ensure they did not become pregnant while on Topamax.

According to reports made to the North American Antiepileptic Drug Pregnancy Registry, the prevalence of oral clefts in children born to mothers who used Topamax while pregnant was 20 times higher than among women who did not take any antiepiletic drug. When compared to other epilepsy drugs, the prevalence of birth defects was still 2-3 times greater with Topamax pregnancy use.

Because of the drug makers’ decision not to disclose this important information, there are many children who have experienced birth defect problems. Compensation may be available through a Topamax cleft palate or Topamax lip lawsuit for children who were exposed to the drug before they were born.

March 22, 2011

Slip and Fall Premises Liability Update

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Dallas Slip and Fall Attorney, I would like provide a quick explanation and an update of Texas Slip and Fall law.

A slip and fall accident is a type of personal injury claim that occurs when a person slips and falls on another person’s property. It is based on the breach of duty that the owner of the property was negligent in failing to correct the dangerous condition that caused the slip and fall.

If you were in a public place or a private residence in Texas and hurt yourself due to a slip and fall, you may file a slip and fall lawsuit. But if the accident was your fault, or there is some other intervening circumstance that does not satisfy the slip and fall lawsuit requirement, you can expect that it would get dismissed.

You have to prove negligence on the part of the company or private citizen at whose Texas property the slip and fall injury took place. A classic example would be a wet floor. We are all familiar with businesses that mop their floors and put out bright yellow or orange caution signs and/or cones to warn people that the area is wet and not to cross it. If these signs are clearly posted and you cross into the slippery area anyway, the business has a good chance of not being liable for the fall.

The term Premises Liability is used when assigning responsibility for injuries caused by the defective design or maintenance of property, including private homes, public buildings, and anywhere a person would have a reasonable expectation of safety.

“Negligence” means failure to use ordinary care to provide a safe place and to reduce or eliminate an unreasonable risk of harm created by the condition or use of a place, equipment or procedures.

Property owners have a duty to keep their property safe. To hold the property owner responsible, one of the following three conditions must apply to the incident:

1. The owner of the property, or one of their employees, caused the worn or torn spot, the spill or the dangerous surface that resulted in the slip and fall.

2. The property owner knew about the dangerous condition but didn’t do anything about it.

3. The owner of the property should have known about the dangerous condition because a reasonable person tending to a piece of property would have detected the problem and taken steps to correct it.

To read more, click here.

March 19, 2011

Exxon to Pay $25 M For Shipyard Worker Mesothelioma

by Dr. Shezad Malik

As a Dallas Mesothelioma and Asbestos Attorney, I am reporting this Virgina Mesothelioma verdict against Exxon.

A jury awarded a former shipyard employee $25M in his lawsuit against Exxon for asbestos-related medical problems. The suit was filed against Exxon, the ship owner, rather than the parts supplier.

The lawsuit argued that Exxon knew about the problems with asbestos, and even developed rules to protect workers at refineries beginning in 1937, but did not warn shipyard workers or crew members.

An attorney for the worker said the case proved Exxon knew about the cancer link since the 1940s, and knew by the 1960s that it caused mesothelioma.

Asbestos is a carcinogenic fiber that causes lung cancer and mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer of the lining of the body’s major organs and cavities. Asbestos was used in construction for over a century because of its versatility and heat resistance, making it an ideal insulator.