What do we look for when we go buy a new car? Price is certainly an important consideration and, of course, utility; will it fit everyone it has to fit? We look at color, interior material, and, currently, the crucial “miles per gallon city” rating.

Do we look at the design of the vehicle; the rollover potential; crash worthiness; or safety rating? We try to consider the information that will most affect our safety and the safety of our family, but the advertising issued by vehicle manufacturers can sometimes get in the way. They tell us to buy the fastest, the classiest, the most affordable, or the best gas mileage. Safety is sometimes not synonymous with fast, classy, or affordable.

Vehicle crashes kill more than one million people a year, injuring another thirty-eight million (5 million of them seriously).  The death toll on the world’s roadways makes driving the number one cause of death and injury for young people ages 15 to 44. 

There has been significant research done and crash ratings assigned that rate the safety of various vehicles in different types of collisions and rollover accidents. For example, one of the most important factors in protecting occupants in roll-overs is whether or not the roof of the vehicle will resist collapsing into the passenger compartment. There have been many crashes in which drivers and passengers have been seriously injured or killed when the vehicle they were driving or riding as passengers was not crashworthy. If all the automobile manufacturers would adopt and adhere to strict safety guidelines for all automobiles on the road today, a lot of these tragedies could be avoided. Safety should be the key issue when buying a motor vehicle. In fact, if automobile manufacturers would simply comply with their own studies, the safety of vehicles on our highways would be greatly improved.

Where can we go to help us determine the best and safest vehicle to buy? Try Consumer Reports; the National Highway Transportation & Safety Administration; the Insurance Institute for highway safety; and the Highway safety Group.

What is Big Tobacco doing in the Florida tobacco litigation now? They are sending out teams of lawyers and investigators to track down and interview each smoker’s sons, daughters, grandchildren, Aunt Mary, Uncle Bob, the third cousin twice removed, the neighbors, the neighbors neighbors—you get the idea. (more…)

As if keeping up with what is a brand name versus what is a generic medication wasn’t enough, now you can’t even be certain whether what you’re handed by your local pharmacy is even the real deal anyway. Pretty scary stuff.

So the question is while we all are paying the highest prices in decades for our medication how does this happen? The industry and FDA indicate these are high quality fakes. Sorry, not good enough and I don’t buy it. Frankly, that is taking the easy way out. Consumers deserve better. The facts are in the ever expanding effort to lower costs; the pharmaceutical companies and the retail pharmacies, like so many industries, have defaulted to price and profit over quality and safety. Come on, I don’t care how good these pills look shouldn’t these big companies know and investigate who they are buying from? My late father, a very wise man, used to love to use the phrase “too good to be true”. One wonders if a new supplier comes in to the pharmaceutical market, with seemingly impossibly low prices, who is doing the testing of the product and the background check when the bells should be going off? I guess certain folks simply don’t want the answer to some obvious questions. According to the US News and World Report it is left to consumers like Arthur Soclof, an allergist in Livonia Michigan, who on his own discovered his cholesterol medication, Lipitor, sold to him by his local pharmacy, was a fake. (more…)

So, what is Big Tobacco doing these days in the Florida “Engle” litigation? Are they aggressively trying to bring cases to trial so they can be vindicated? Are they conducting important investigation and discovery in an effort to further justice? Ah, not so much.

I speak with clients each day who want to know why Big Tobacco is sending lawyers (or at least people representing themselves as lawyers) to speak with uncle Joe or their fourth cousin, twice removed, with whom they have not spoken since third grade. They want to know why Big Tobacco needs to know where they have lived through their entire 70+ years of life. Why Big Tobacco insists on bothering their neighbors with interviews?

Well, it is all part of a grand plan, I am sure—right? It is most probably a part of a grand, master plan; but is it one in which the purpose is to further justice? Ah, probably not so much.

In the ‘90’s, there was a movie called “Class Action”; in which Gene Hackman played a lawyer fighting for the rights of victims horribly injured and killed by a defective automobile. In one scene, after discovering the defect the car company president calls in his statistics people, or “bean counters”, as they are affectionately referred to by the president. He asks the bean counters whether lawsuits will cost him more than the cost to retool the line and they tell him that lawsuits will be cheaper than the cost to prevent injuries and deaths. The president decides to continue manufacturing the defective car.

In the Engle tobacco litigation, Big Tobacco faces some 8000 plaintiffs. Tragically and as a direct result of cigarette addiction, these folks are largely older, sick people. I would be quite surprised if Big Tobacco has not consulted the “bean counters” and asked them what number of plaintiffs can be “eliminated” through delay and aggressive litigation tactics. I would suspect the bean counters to let them know how long the litigation needs to be delayed to eliminate “X” numbers of plaintiffs.

Am I being unfair to Big Tobacco? Not so much.

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Not necessarily. The herbal product industry is still a largely unregulated industry and historically we know that many of America’s Corporate Citizens have a hard time policing themselves. When those spreadsheets hit the boardroom tables in Big Corporations, it can be difficult for them to consider safety and not focus exclusively on profit margin, bottom line.

When you pick up an herbal drug, you may ask yourself just how much testing and safety analysis the product has undergone. Until the product causes a problem, no one may know for certain. If the problem does not reach the attention of the FDA or Trial Attorneys, consumers may suffer injury or death without discovery that it is the “natural herbal product” that is the culprit.

International Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. has agreed to recall a product called “Viril-Ity-Power (VIP) Tabs, but only after the FDA analyzed the product and advised International Pharmaceuticals that it could cause dangerous drops in blood pressure in some patients. Viril-Ity-Power was touted as a sexual enhancement in the same category as Viagra and similar, regulated drugs. Consumers with diabetes, high blood pressure high cholesterol, or heart disease often takes these types of products. Those consumers, of course, are at most risk with a side effect that dangerously lowers blood pressure.

Kudos to the FDA for their analysis and action to cause a recall.

Do Big Corporations rail against the production of defective products? Do they form groups to monitor unsafe manufacturing methods? Does Corporate America want to put the American consumer first? The answer is a resounding—NO! So, do these things, by themselves, make Big Corporations bad? Again, a resounding-NO!

Corporate America is in the business of maximizing profits. This strengthens our economy and helps to keep people employed. I am in favor of Corporate America making a profit and in their growth. What I am not in favor of is Big Corporations who invest millions of dollars in efforts that try to twist constitutional rights of our citizens in an effort to maximize Big Corporation profits. I am not in favor of Big Corporations who purchase legislators who sneak through legislation designed to protect Big Corporations to the detriment of citizens.

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According to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Bausch & Lomb is involved in a lawsuit against its insurance companies arising out of the ReNu with MoistureLoc lawsuits. The Democrat reports that attorneys for the insurers maintain that Bausch knew about the problems with its ReNu with MoistureLoc causing infections to injured victims for “several months before the recall” and that any injuries were not accidents.

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Reports of three children fracturing their skulls after falling out of the popular foam Bumbo “Baby Sitter” seats have prompted the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to recall approximately one million of these seats. The CPSC has received 28 reports of young children falling out of the seats including the three who were seriously injured. Those accidents happened when the seats were placed on a raised surface such as tables or chairs. The CPSC notice says: “If the seat is placed on a table, countertop, chair or other elevated surface, young children can arch their backs, flip out of the Bumbo seat, and fall onto the floor, posing risk of serious head injuries.”

The chairs are constructed from a single piece of molded foam and come in a variety of colors. The seat wraps completely around the back of the baby and a crotch post at the center front forms two leg openings. The bottom is round and flat. The recalled seats were sold over the past four years, beginning in August 2003, at Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, Toys R Us, Babies R Us, USA Babies and at other toy and children’s stores nationwide, including online retailers, for about $40.

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Joe Camel and his Big Tobacco crew crash landed in front of the US Judicial Panel on Mul-District Litigation. Big Tobacco had sought to convince the panel that all cases filed or removed to federal court should all be sent to multi-district litigation.

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Is the phrase, a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” in the constitution? Popular belief is yes, but it is not actually in the constitution. Rather, this phrase comes from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. It is probably a concept that should have been incorporated into the constitution and certainly Lincoln included it to remind citizens that it is their country. I think politicians, and even some of us, forget that it is OUR government and the politicians are OUR employees; they are supposed to be working in OUR best interests.

Business interests are fond of complaining about the jury system and regularly claim that it is “broken”, it needs to be “fixed”. Perhaps the best word is, in fact, “fixed”; they would like to fix the civil justice system so that it can be better influenced in their direction. Should we hold it against them because they work to achieve an unfair playing field? We should not hate Big Corporations for this, but should we allow them to achieve it? Absolutely not!

I think the jury system our founding fathers borrowed from English common law works just fine in protecting the rights of individual citizens. Frankly, I want six of my fellow citizens sitting and listening to evidence in my case. I want six regular people considering what makes sense and what does not make sense. I do not want a special panel appointed to hear my case, as has been promoted by many business “political parrots”. I do not want the government inserting itself into the civil justice system anymore than they already do. I trust an impartial panel of my fellow citizens to fairly weigh the evidence and reach a decision that makes sense.

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