Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

Cause of Jet Crash Announced a Year Later - Thursday, July 26, 2007

The pilots of a jet that crashed last summer killing 49 people left the terminal without receiving four very important airport advisories, including one that said the normal taxiway to the main runway was closed. The four updates called Notices to Airmen were missing from the flight dispatch paperwork the pilots receive from Comair. Comair relies on pre-recorded messages to get local advisories from Kentucky's Blue Grass Airport, but the taxiway closing was not recorded on August 27, 2006, when Comair Flight 5191 crashed after mistakenly taking off from the general aviation runway killing all people aboard but one. The plane taxied down the wrong runway.

The pilots also did not receive information about the airport's general aviation runway being limited to daytime use and about the distance-remaining lights on the airport's main runway being out of service. The airplane crash happened in the pre-dawn darkness. Pilots assert that the current notice system is outdated and isn't always readily available.

Each day, anywhere from 300-1,000 notices are issued across the nation and can contain anything from departure procedures to airport construction notices.

OxyContin Makers and Exec Fined $634 million - Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The maker of the powerful and highly addictive painkiller, OxyContin, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, and three of its executives, were ordered to pay a $634.5 million fine for misleading the public about the drug's risk of addiction. U.S. District Judge James Jones fined Purdue, its top lawyer, former president and former chief medical officer after a hearing on July 20, 2007. At that hearing, several people testified that their lives were changed forever by addiction to the narcotic.

OxyContin is the trade name for a long-acting form of the drug oxycodone and is designed to be swallowed whole and digested over the course of 12 hours. However, when the pills are crushed, they can produce a heroin-like high when the pill is swallowed, snorted or injected. From 1996-2001, the number of OxyContin-related deaths increased fivefold while the number of OxyContin prescriptions increased 20-fold. In 2002, the drug has contributed to almost 500 deaths.

All parties pleaded guilty in May to telling doctors that OxyContin was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications. Judge Jones has placed the drug company on probation for five years and each of the executives on probation for three years. The three were also ordered to perform 400 hours of substance abuse-related community service.

Survivors of victims who have died from OxyContin use want the Food and Drug Administration to reclassify OxyContin for use only for severe pain as now, the drug can be prescribed for moderate pain.

Prempro Suit Settled Hours Before Trial Set to Begin - Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The biggest maker of birth control pills in the United States, Wyeth, settled a lawsuit on the eve of a trial for a terminally ill woman who blamed the company's Prempro menopause drug for her breast cancer.

Judge Bryan Garruto approved the settlement July 16, 2007 just hours before Ellen Deutsch's case was to begin. Terms of the agreement are confidential. Deutsch's case was the third of its kind slated for trial that subsequently settled out of court. Wyeth currently faces over 5,000 lawsuits over various drugs they manufacture.

The hormone therapy Prempro came under fire after a 2002 study found that users had an increased rate of breast cancer. In response to the Prempro controversy, Wyeth has issued new guidelines that caution against its long-term use and has reduced the drug's recommended dosage by half. This may be a case of too little too late, however. Many medical organizations have issued statements urging women to avoid using Prempro and similar hormone therapy drugs altogether.

Lawsuits Against Vioxx Maker Resurface - Monday, July 23, 2007

A federal appeals court revived a group of shareholder lawsuits that accused the makers of Vioxx, Merck & Co., of violating their duties by concealing the health risks of the company's popular painkiller. A three-judge panel ruled that the lawsuits should be sent back to the New Jersey federal judge who dismissed them in May 2006.

Vioxx was once a $2.5 billion-a-year top-selling arthritis drug but was taken off the market in 2004 after a study found that Vioxx users had a higher risk of heart attack, stroke and death than patients taking dummy pills. The appeals court decided that the Judge Stanley Chesler erred when he did not allow the plaintiffs to amend their complaint with additional materials. Chesler had ruled on the ground that those materials were acquired as a result of a consensual discovery agreement.

Since it is a shareholder lawsuit, the plaintiffs normally would have been required to first make a demand on the Merck's Board of Directors, but the plaintiffs said such a demand would have been useless at the time they began the lawsuit.

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