Personal Injury

November 3, 2009

BP Faces Fine for ’05 Refinery Wrongful Death Explosion

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced the largest fine in its history of $87 million in penalties against the oil giant BP for failing to correct safety problems identified after a 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers at its Texas City, Tex. refinery.

The fine is more than four times the size of any previous OSHA sanction. Federal officials said the penalty was the result of BP’s failure to comply in hundreds of instances with a 2005 agreement to fix safety hazards at the refinery, the nation’s third-largest.

OSHA issued 271 notifications to BP for failing to correct hazards at the Texas City refinery over the four-year period since the explosion. As a result, OSHA, which is part of the Labor Department, is issuing fines of $56.7 million. In addition, OSHA also identified 439 “willful and egregious” violations of industry-accepted safety controls at the refinery. Those violations will lead to $30.7 million in additional fines

November 3, 2009

Bat Maker Found Liable for Player’s Wrongful Death

by Dr. Shezad Malik

After 12 hours of deliberation, a jury sided with the parents of baseball pitcher Brandon Patch in a civil suit over the player’s death during a 2003 game in Helena.

Aluminum bat maker Hillerich & Bradsby Co. failed to provide adequate warning as to the dangers of the bat used by a Helena Senators player during the game, according to at least eight of the 12 Lewis and Clark County jurors.

Hillerich & Bradsby Co. was ordered to pay $792,000 to Patch’s estate, which is represented by his mother, Debbie Patch, who filed the suit.

November 3, 2009

Amylin, Lilly’s Byetta Gets Stronger Safety Warning

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. said safety warnings were strengthened for their diabetes drug Byetta relating to the risks of pancreatitis and the medicine’s use by patients with severe kidney disease.

Patients with “severe kidney problems” shouldn’t take Byetta and the treatment should be “used with caution” in people who have had a kidney transplant, San Diego-based Amylin and Indianapolis-based Lilly said in a statement. The companies also said U.S. regulators approved the use of the drug as a stand-alone medication for adults with Type 2 diabetes.

Six patients taking Byetta died in August 2008 from pancreatitis, an inflamed pancreas. A safety alert was issued by the Food and Drug Administration though Amylin said no evidence directly linked the drug to the deaths. The revised language reflects the concerns raised by the FDA a year ago, according to Amylin’s medical director.

November 2, 2009

Anemia Drug Raises Stroke Risk in Kidney Patients

by Dr. Shezad Malik

A drug designed to fight anemia appears to double the risk of stroke in patients with diabetes and kidney disease without substantially improving their quality of life, a new study finds.

Darbepoetin alfa, marketed as Aranesp and known as an erythropoiesis-stimulating agent (ESA), is often prescribed for diabetic patients with chronic kidney disease and mild anemia.

“The benefits we assumed we would have by treating anemia were less striking and the risks were more striking,” said lead researcher Dr. Marc A. Pfeffer, a professor of medicine in the cardiovascular division of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“This provides new data for doctors and patients to make their own risk-benefit assessment,” he said. “There was a perception that treating anemia would make people feel so much better that we’ll take risks, but the benefit in quality of life was not as great as we thought, and there was a clear doubling of your risk for a stroke.”

November 2, 2009

Firefighter’s Widow Alleges Department Failed to Properly Maintain Equipment.

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The widow of a LA firefighter who was killed last year while on duty has sued the fire department and the city for allegedly causing his death by refusing to replace outdated equipment.

Ralph Arabie, a 30-year veteran of the David Crockett Steam Fire Company No. 1, was killed in September 2008 at the station when the hydraulic boom of a 1965 aerial device struck and pinned his head to the back of one of the station’s trucks. He was pronounced dead at the scene of blunt force trauma to the head.

The lawsuit, filed alleges that Arabie was killed because the city and station failed to “properly maintain an already over aged fire truck,” and “replace overly-aged hydraulic components.”

Jan Arabie is suing for damages including the loss of her spouse, loss of support, mental anguish and emotional distress.

November 2, 2009

AstraZeneca Pays $520 M to Settle Seroquel Whistle Blower Cases

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said that it had reached a $520 million agreement to settle two federal investigations and two whistle-blower lawsuits over the sale and marketing of its blockbuster psychiatric drug Seroquel.

One of the investigations related to “selected physicians who participated in clinical trials involving Seroquel,” AstraZeneca disclosed in a government filing. The other case related to off-label promotion of the drug.

As a result of aggressive marketing, Seroquel has been increasingly used for children and elderly people for indications not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Doctors are permitted to prescribe any approved drug for off-label uses.

Seroquel was the top-selling antipsychotic drug in America. It had $17 billion in sales in the United States since 2004, according to IMS Health, a research firm.

October 30, 2009

Class Action Patients Exposed to Radiation sue Cedars-Sinai

by Dr. Shezad Malik

More than 200 patients exposed to high levels of radiation at Cedars-Sinai hospital filed suit, and attorneys say more plaintiffs could be added as word of the lawsuit spreads.

The president of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center – where patients were recently exposed to eight times the recommended radiation after undergoing brain tests related to a stroke – issued a statement saying he regretted the circumstances that led to the mistake.

October 30, 2009

Appeals Court Reverses $24.2 M Verdict in Asbestos Mesothelioma Case

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The 3rd District Court of Appeal reversed a $24.2 million verdict Wednesday, striking a Miami-Dade jury award to a Weston, Fla., surgeon who claimed asbestos exposure caused his terminal cancer.

In a unanimous unsigned opinion, the three-judge panel remanded the products liability lawsuit by Dr. Stephen Guilder against Honeywell International and ordered a new trial.

Guilder won one of the highest compensatory damage awards against a single defendant in a mesothelioma case in April 2008. He died before the appeal was decided.

He claimed he developed the rare peritoneal mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos by remodeling an attic, working in road construction and repairing cars in the 1970s and 1980s.

October 30, 2009

Lawsuit Claims That Company is Liabe for Drunk Employee Car Crash

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Trial is set to begin in Michigan in a lawsuit that claims a company is liable for three deaths caused by a company employee who was driving drunk.

Thomas Wellinger, who had been sent from his office at UGS Corp. to seek medical attention, drove his vehicle at 70 mph into a car driven by Judith Weinstein, killing her and her two sons, ages 9 and 12. Her husband, Gary Weinstein of Farmington Hills, Mich., claims in a wrongful-death suit that USG Corp. had a duty not to let Wellinger leave the premises.

October 29, 2009

Federal Agencies to Assess Potential Lasik Problems

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Three federal agencies — the Food and Drug Administration, the Defense Department and the National Eye Institute — announced last week that they are launching a three-year effort to gauge how many, and which, patients suffer troubling symptoms after undergoing the vision correction procedure called Lasik.

At the same time, the FDA issued letters reminding 17 walk-in surgical centers performing Lasik surgery of their obligation to report poor outcomes and patients’ surgery-related medical complaints. The letters were issued after the FDA conducted a spate of inspections of Lasik facilities and found many had no system for collecting and transmitting to the FDA data on patients’ reports of post-surgical “adverse events.” More inspections are to come, the FDA said.