A Philadelphia judge has struck down the bid to establish a mass tort program for numerous cases claiming the antibiotics Levaquin, Avelox and Cipro led to nerve damage.
Administrative Judge Jacqueline F. Allen last week denied a motion from 32 plaintiffs who had sought to consolidate their claims into a mass tort. She issued her decision in Whitters v. Bayer in a one-paragraph order siding with the drugmakers Bayer Corp. and Johnson & Johnson. The order did not explain Allen's reasoning.
Feb 4 Emails between high-ranking Michigan state officials show they knew about an uptick in Legionnaires' disease and it could be linked to problems with Flint water long before Governor Rick Snyder said he got information on the outbreak.
The US government has cleared the way for Google to create a self-driving car that doesn't also have a human driver inside the vehicle that can take over if necessary. In this setup, the autonomous driving software itself would be the vehicle's legal "driver"; none of the human passengers would require a driving licence.
A Southern California doctor was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison on Friday for over-prescribing drugs that caused the fatal overdose of three patients in a murder case capped by the first conviction of its kind in the United States.
It's not often that a disease-awareness campaign makes unwanted waves. But Novartis' recently launched heart failure push is doing just that--literally and figuratively.
A TV commercial uses rising water to illustrate the threat of heart failure, and as CardioBrief notes, it's a terrifying depiction. The TV ad and accompanying print work have prompted criticism from doctors, including the cardiologist, Milton Packer, who headed up a key trial testing Novartis' new heart failure pill Entresto, the CV-focused blog reports.
Energy companies in Oklahoma are facing two separate lawsuits that claim fracking is increasing earthquakes throughout the state.
They claim hydraulic fracturing and underground water disposal have caused a “dramatic increase” in earthquakes in the last five years.
Fracking, which extracts trapped natural gas from underground shale, uses and creates an excess of water, some of which contains toxic chemicals that must be disposed of and stored underground. Griggs and Marler allege the process of fracking and the water it produces have increased the pore pressure within underground faults, causing them to slip.
A Florida woman is suing the Hyatt hotel chain, alleging it was negligent in a data breach.
According to the complaint, beginning in July 2015, hackers utilizing malware accessed Hyatt computer systems and stole copies of Hyatt customers' private information, including payment card data. The suit says on Dec. 15, 2015, Hyatt announced it had discovered the data breach and stated it had since taken steps to strengthen its security systems.
The lawsuit, however, states Hyatt could and should have prevented this data breach by taking adequate and reasonable measures to ensure its data systems were protected, as the malicious software used in the breach was likely a variant of "BlackPOS," the same strain that hackers used in last year's data breaches of other hotel chains.
Lumber Liquidators will pay more than $13 million in criminal fines and restitution for illegally importing hardwood and other environmental crimes.
Federal officials had accused the company of knowingly trafficking in Mongolian Oak from illegal sources and then lying about where the wood was harvested from. It is illegal to take Mongolian Oak from forests in Far East Russia and Myanmar because of their importance in the eco-system of the last wild Siberian tigers and Amur leopards.
"The case against Lumber Liquidators shows the true cost of turning a blind eye to the environmental laws that protect endangered wildlife," said Assistant Attorney General John Cruden for the U.S. Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.
