Archives : 2008 : February
Jury Awards $10 Million to Brain Damaged Woman
A jury has awarded a 58-year-old woman, left brain damaged after being struck by an MBTA bus, a verdict of $10 million. The total sum of the award with interest comes up to $12.5 million.
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Family of Man Killed by Tree To Receive $700,000
The Anaheim City Council has agreed to pay $700,000 to the family of a man who was killed when a massive tree fell on his parked car.
On the day of the incident, the man, 49-year-old Michael Gandy, a church maintenance worker, had parked his Ford Aerostar van under a ficus tree on the tree lined Archer Street. He was working on a book on church history and apparently decided to head back to the car to work on it some more. He probably never heard the 50-foot-tall tree as it crashed through the car’s roof smashing the vehicle beyond recognition. When emergency personnel arrived, they had to use special chisels to extricate Michael, trapped in the car. It was his 49th birthday. He died a few days later at a local hospital.
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Wyeth to Pay Woman $2.57 Million Over Hormone-Replacement Drugs
Wyeth has had their first loss in a series of lawsuits over its hormonal replacement therapy drugs Premarin and Prempro. A jury has awarded a woman in Little Rock, Arkansas a sum of $2.75 million.
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Kids in Bus Accident Saved by their Car Seats
For those who take the importance of a child car seat lightly, there was a lesson to be learned from a school bus accident in Chino Valley, California. The bus, which was carrying school children, took a bumpy ride after being hit by a car before coming to a stop. The only thing that stopped kids from pinballing all over the bus and getting serious injuries were the fact that they were all strapped in car seats.
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Illegal Alien Arrested for Drunk Driving
An illegal alien in Pittsfield Township, Michigan has been arrested after causing a drunk driving accident. Three persons were injured when the Mexican national turned his pick up truck and hit the van head on.
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Bayer Drug Trasylol Linked to Heart Attacks, Strokes
It’s a sad state of affairs that we’ve come to expect ineptitude from the FDA, a body that is entrusted with making sure that Americans have access to safe drugs. Once too often, we’ve see the agency fall flat on its face, like the scandal recently where the FDA approved drugs manufactured by a Chinese plant that it hadn’t seen the inside of in years.
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Minnesota Bus Crash Investigation Yields New Clues
Last Tuesday’s school bus crash in southwestern Minnesota was the most disastrous in the state in the past two decades. Four children were killed and many were injured as the bus belonging to the Lakeview School toppled over on to its side.
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Duragesic Pain Patches Recalled
There seem to be a whole other set of rules where drug companies are concerned. If you were caught speeding five times, you could expect to have your license suspended. If you were caught DUI and had not caused any injuries or deaths due to your drunken driving, you could have your license suspended indefinitely (and rightfully so). If you’re Johnson & Johnson on the other hand, and you have a product out on the market that has been recalled a total of five times, you could actually get away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
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Largest Beef Recall in US History
A California company has issued the largest beef recall in US history. The recall is estimated at 143 million pounds of beef, all the beef manufactured in the past two years in fact. Much of the beef at the meat packing plant Westland/Hallmark Meat was meant for schools across the country.
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FDA Neglected to Inspect Chinese Drug Plant Before Approval
You would think that with China’s “excellent” record in product safety, we would have learned to put better checks on all products coming from that country. In the recent past, Chinese imports have left FDA officials red faced as they have been caught with one food scandal after another –tainted Chinese pet food and fish among them.
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