West Palm Beach Personal Injury Lawyer articles in category: Defective & Dangerous Products

The Daily & Sunday Review reports that Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett is one of eight attorney generals preparing to sue RJ Reynolds for violating an agreement that was part of the 1998 settlement between Big Tobacco and various states. As a part of the agreement, Big Tobacco promised not to use advertising that appealed to youth. That seems like a reasonable and moral request. Big...

Big Tobacco had sought a transfer of all cases currently filed in federal courts, to a Multi-District Litigation Panel that would be located in the Middle District or Southern District of the federal court system in Florida. Today the United States Multi-District Litigation Panel issued an order that denied Big Tobacco's request for transfer and ruled that the cases can be properly handled where...

The deadline to file suit is getting closer for plaintiffs who suffered from illnesses related to smoking. Last year the Florida Supreme Court overturned a class action civil damage award of $145 billion spread among 700,000 decided in 2000, requiring instead that each smoker show that cigarettes caused the damages. Although the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to plaintiffs by overturning the...

Last year, the Florida Supreme Court appeared to have done Big Tobacco a favor iwhen it ruled that the $145 billion punitive damage verdict would have to be vacated and the "Engle Class" would have to be disbanded. Ruling that plaintiffs would have to proceed in individual trials against Big Tobacco. In fact, many on Wall Street saw it as a a huge victory for Big Tobacco. So, did Big Tobacco...

Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys -- including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters -- because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead. CNN reports that more than 967,000 toys have been recalled.This is a unique recall since Mattel, the parent company to Fisher Price, maintains very high quality control standards and have had only one previous recall of a...

China was criticised for bad pet food, poisoned toothpast and tires that they forgot to glue together. But, not to be outdone, enter Castleberry Food Company. They have issued recall of 75 different products; all apparently suspected of being contaminated with botulism. Botulism contamination of canned, processed foods, in the US is extremely rare. That said, botulism can cause a severe,...

China has certainly suffered its share of setbacks in the export of products to the rest of the world. They have allowed tainted toothpaste to leave their country and deadly dog & cat food to be exported. Most recently, it was discovered that Chinese tires were manufactured without including the material that binds the belts together. China's response to this event has been essentially two-fold....

Most strains of Acanthamoeba will survive exposure to AMO's Complete MoisturePlus, Alcon's OptiFree Express and B&L's ReNu MultiPlus. Under testing conditions that reflect the "real world," none of those solutions are stellar performers, and only one is effective under certain conditions. Recently, Complete Moisture Plus has been shown to be seven times more likely to have caused the most recent...

The OCRegister reported that AMO and the FDA are "...urging people to dispose of Complete Moisture Plus Multi-Purpose solution...", which the CDC and FDA have linked to a rare and unusual eye infection. Acanthamoeba is an organism commonly found in water. Although most acanthamoeba infections occur in contact lens wearers, it is extremely rare; affecting only one or two wearers in every million...

The cornea is the only tissue in the body that Acanthamoebae (or Acanthamoeba) can invade in individuals with healthy immune systems. Otherwise, those individuals can usually avoid Acanthamoeba infections that affect the skin, brain and lungs. This blog briefly addresses two questions: 1) Why is the cornea more susceptible to Acanthamoeba than other tissues in the body; and 2) How could a...

So, AMO and Bausch want to blame the EPA and the water for their problems with ReNu® and Complete® contact lens solutions. Conveniently, researchers in Illinois stood ready with a study that gave the opportunity to blame the Environmental Protection Agency for the whole problem. The researchers, Drs. Tu and Joslin reported infections from acanthamoeba that were drastically higher than normal....

On May 25, AMO (Advanced Medical Optics) announced a recall of their "No Rub" solution, Complete® MoisturePlus ™ Multipurpose Solution. Although the company stands by its product and casts the blame on contact lens wearers who "improperly store, disinfect or handle" their contact lenses, the CDC forced them to recall the solutionThis recall is not so distant from Bausch & Lomb's recall of...

In 1957, if you asked anyone at the top at Lorillard Tobacco in North Carolina, who Marie Evans was, you probably would have gotten a response, "I don't know; Never heard of her." But she was a real nine-year-old little black girl, innocently playing with other kids, hundreds of miles away, at the Orchard Park housing complex in Roxbury, Massachusetts, a poor community in Boston. One Lorillard...

Currently, smoke-free laws are in place in several states and thousands of U.S. communities. Smoke-free statutes and ordinances now protect over 50% of the U.S. population. But what about millions of children who are exposed to secondhand smoke on a daily basis? After decades of court battles against tobacco companies, the first battle occurring in 1954, are they still capitalizing on these...

The Florida Supreme Court has issued its mandate in the Engle v Liggett case. This case involved a class action by Florida smokers against Big Tobacco. Florida smokers who qualify as "Engle class members" must now take some action against Big Tobacco in less than one year. The Supreme Court made certain findings of fact and law that may place Big Tobacco at a distinct disadvantage and Florida...