Current Class Action Lawsuits

AT&T Phantom Data Lawsuit Update

The AT&T phantom data lawsuit filed last month in California is still pending this month.  The class action lawsuit is awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court on another AT&T class action lawsuit.  The current phantom data charges lawsuit is on hold until the Supreme Court can make a decision on the other lawsuit, which is also between AT&T’s wireless division and a wireless customer.

In the previous AT&T class action, a California couple charges AT&T with violating California’s consumer protection laws.  There were allegedly charged around $30 for a phone they believed to be free.  The class action was filed in 2006 and is now before the Supreme Court, awaiting a decision.

There is a clause in all wireless contracts with AT&T stating that customers cannot participate in class action lawsuits against the company.  Matters are to be settled out of court, and individually, which is of course a cheaper alternative for the giant communications company.  The Supreme Court, however, has deemed this clause as unconscionable.  That means the clause is so unfair it’s not even enforceable.

AT&T lawyers are fighting back, stating that there are Federal laws that actually encourage arbitration agreements, and that these laws pre-empt state laws that allow consumers to bring class action lawsuits.  States like California argue that arbitration agreement clauses like AT&T’s essentially leave the public no recourse when a company has caused them injury.

So, the AT&T phantom data lawsuit will have to wait until the Supreme Court decides whether an AT&T class action can even occur.

Fosomax Side Effects

Fosomax is an osteoporosis drug that has recently been linked to atypical fractures after long term use.  A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported a link between women who had taken Fosomax for more than five years, and atypical thigh fractures.  The Fosomax side effects are unsettling for some, disturbing for those who have long term use of the drug in their past.

Atypical fractures in this case are femur fractures in what is considered the strongest part of the bone.  The fracture can happen suddenly and without warning, so is a particularly serious Fosomax side effect.  The Canadian study mentioned above found one or two women out of one thousand participants suffered the atypical leg injury, or femur fracture.

Medtronic Pump Recall

The FDA has issued a Class I recall for an implantable infusion pump that had been associated with at least eight deaths since 1996.  The Medtronic pump recall affects the SynchroMed II and SynchroMed EL units, sold for dissemination of pain medication and treatment for neurological disorders.

The problem with the Medtronic pumps is that in the action of refilling the device.  If the doctor inserts the refill needle into the pump but doesn’t push it all the way in so that it hits the needle stop, problems occur.  The needle can actually fill the medicine into pockets around the reservoir instead of into the reservoir.  The pump refill error will cause the medicine to go into the subcutaneous layer of the patient’s skin.  This can cause overdose.

The FDA issued the Medtronic pump recall as a Class I, meaning the most serious form of recall.  These recalls involve serious injury or death, as stated above.  The Medtronic pump recall was issued after such facts as a 1 in 10,000 problem with the drug refills, and the fact that eight people have died from this problem since 1996.

There already was a warning on the label of the SynchroMed II and SynchroMed EL models, but new labeling will include information about the FDA warning and its advice on patient management in case of a drug refill error.  Medtronic has always included reminders on both the pump and the refill kit about being careful when refilling the pump.  The FDA sent what’s called a correction letter, which is to designate that are ordering a product label correction, which in this case with the severity of outcome should a pump refill error occur, is a Class I recall.

Medtronic isn’t pulling the implant infusion pumps from the shelves, but rather relabeling them to warn doctors to be careful not to miss the proper target when using a needle to refill the pumps.

Superbowl Class Action Lawsuit

The seating fiasco at Dallas Stadium has resulted in a Superbowl class action lawsuit, filed this past week in Federal Court.  Apparently seating workers walked off the job, leaving some seating sections at Dallas Stadium, where this year’s Superbowl football game was held, unfinished and unusable.  The seating was unfinished and therefore the local fire marshal deemed it unsafe, leaving Dallas Cowboys owner and stadium managers no choice but to leave the seating sections containing hundreds of seats, empty.

When season ticket holders arrived at the Superbowl game in Dallas last week, they were allegedly told their seats were unavailable.  Season ticket holders and other ticket holders, totaling 1250 people, were all either given cancellation notices the day of the game, or eventually given temporary seating which turned out to be substandard and with obstructed views.  The plaintiffs in the Superbowl class action lawsuit, who represent two groups, are suing Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for cost of travel to a game they never got to attend, and for breach of contract for tickets they purchased and for which they received low quality seating with terrible views.

Some season ticket holders paid as much as $100,000 for just one ticket!  The money went towards building the Dallas Stadium, which is home to the Dallas Cowboys football team.  These season ticket holders, a special group of supporters, are called The Founders, since they helped build the stadium.  How ironic then, when they were given temporary seating on hard metal chairs with bad views of the game.  This is the group that’s suing in the Superbowl class action lawsuit, for breach of contract.

The other group, of about 400 of the 1200, never even got any seats, temporary or otherwise.  They had to watch the game on monitors.  They weren’t even told of their lack of seating until they arrived at the stadium the day of the game.  This group is suing for travel expenses, among other things, in the Superbowl class action lawsuit.

iPhone Data Class Action Lawsuit

AT&T has been named in an iPhone data class action lawsuit over phantom data charges.  iPhone users who examine their bills notice that they are being over charged for web time  and also that they are being charged for time they never used.  Known as phantom data, charges that show up on the invoice for data transfers the user never requested, and are the basis of the iPhone class action lawsuit.

The over charging and the charging for phantom data can be compared to a gas pump at a gas station that charges you for 1.2 gallons every time you buy just one gallon.  And then you see a second charge on your credit card bill for gas you never even bought.  The amount is small, but for the gas station, it all adds up to a lot of money.  The iphone class action lawsuit was initiated after an independent consulting firm hired by the plaintiff discovered after studying his bills for two months, that AT&T was overcharging him by a little bit each month.

The amount of the over charging, states the counsel in the iPhone data class action lawsuit, was seven to fourteen percent each month.  Actually that’s quite a bit of overcharging, say the plaintiffs.  The consulting firm hired by Patrick Hendricks, the plaintiff, noticed that AT&T would charge for 107 KB of data transfer, when in reality the plaintiff only downloaded 100 KB of data.  That’s the minimum amount of overcharging discovered, seven percent.  The iPhone data class action lawsuit states that sometimes the over charging was as much as 300%.

The second part of the iPhone data class action lawsuit claimed that AT&T charged for data transfer time that never even occurred.  They bought a new iPhone and disabled all buttons that would allow the user to connect for data transfer.  They let it sit unused for more than a week and got charged for 35 data transfers.

Breast Implant Lawsuit

The Dow Corning class action settlement its entering the final stages as deadlines for claims come due.  This past December 2010 was deadline for new breast implant lawsuit cases against the company who made silicone breast implants in the 1970s and 1980s.  In a class action lawsuit that grabbed the public’s eye for years, one company went bankrupt, billions of dollars were handed out, and medical experts have given no less than two hundred different opinions on whether the silicone-filled breast implants of the 70s and 80s caused medical problems for women.

The settlement coast Dow Corning a bankruptcy, plus billions of dollars.  The FDA forced Dow to withdraw silicone-filled implants from the market in 1992 after multiple cases of leakage occurred, and were widely publicized in the national media.  The alarming leakage cases finally culminated in a breast implant class action, filed in 1998.  That led to the Dow Corning class action settlement, whose deadline was December 15, 2010 for new cases.

In coincidental timing, Federal health officials announced last week that they are studying 60 cases of a rare cancer that may have been caused by breast implants.  The cancer is very rare, so occurrence in 60 women with implants is significant and they are monitoring those cases closely.  However, there is not enough evidence to withdraw implants from the market again, and it will take at least a decade for follow-through data and the study to be complete.

In the meantime, the FDA will work together with manufacturers of today’s breast implants, Allergan Inc. and Johnson & Johnson’s Mentor Corp., to put warnings on the labels of all implants.  The group of women who got cancer had both silicone and saline-filled breast implants, so the warning will cover both types. Failure to put warnings on the implants at this stage could result in another round of the breast implant lawsuit environment that pervaded the 1990s.

The rare cancer that is now possibly linked to implants is anaplastic large cell lymphoma.  Women with the cancer reported symptoms of pain and swelling around the area of surgery after implants.  The cancer is rare and aggressive, so women should monitor their implants carefully for anything unusual and go to the doctor immediately if any symptoms arise.  Treatment is chemotherapy, which hopefully leads to remission and high survival rates.  In patients whose cancer comes back after chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant is the next step.  Survival rates for this type of cancer vary with different forms of the disease.

GlaxoSmithKline Lawsuits

GlaxoSmithKline  announced today that it will be setting aside billions of dollars to fight mounting lawsuits over its top selling diabetes drug Avandia.  The United States and Britain have faced a surge in GlaxoSmithKline lawsuits over the past few months, prompting the drug giant to add to its already substantial legal defense fund.

Last summer (2010), GlaxoSmithKline had already announced billions of dollars, to the tune of $2.36 billion, to be saved for costs of GlaxoSmithKline lawsuits due to Federal investigations over Avandia as well as antidepressant Paxil.  Now, just six months later, they find they need to add to the fund.  The original sum for fighting legal battles and for aiding the investigations into alleged off label marketing charges, was $2.36 billion.  Now, the total legal accounts totals $5.76 billion.  That’s a whopping sum, even for a drug company giant like GlaxoSmithKline.

Avandia is a leading diabetes drug, but in 2007 it was discovered in a scientific study that it may raise risk of heart attack by as much as 43%.  Thousands of patients have sued GlaxoSmithKline, with the number of GlaxoSmithKline lawsuits growing every month.

The money set aside for GlaxoSmithKline lawsuits, announced in today’s papers, just about wipes out the company’s 2010 fourth quarter profits.  As a result, shares fell in today’s markets.  The company faces other legal woes, such a ongoing investigations by the United States over another drug, Paxil.

Paxil is an antidepressant which has serious side effects.  The US government is investigating whether GlaxoSmithKline promoted off-label uses for the drug, as well as whether they made payments to doctors in exchange for promoting the drug.

Birth Control Lawsuit

Birth control lawsuits have been prevalent in the news for at least the past couple of years now.  Ever since Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella came on the market, the popular oral contraceptives have been controversial.  These drugs contain drospirenone, which is a progestin that blocks the effects of male hormones in the body.  The generic form, Ocella, is also under review as birth control lawsuits mount in almost every state plus Canada.

The question is whether taking Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella raises the risk of venous thromboembolism, or blood clots.  The “fourth generation” birth control pills have allegedly been linked to higher rates of blood clots in women taking them.  Class action lawsuits have been forming in just about every state, and the Canadian legal system has seen case after case as well.  Over two million prescriptions were filled in 2009 in Canada alone.

This new generation of birth control pills are different from the Pill introduced in the 1970s because they contain progestin.  Specifically, the progestin contained is called drospirenone.  Birth control lawsuits over Yaz are actually over what drospirenone does to the potassium levels in a woman’s body.  Potassium levels are increased as a result of taking Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella.  This can be dangerous for many high-risk types, and the FDA has actually warned the makers of Yaz and Yasmin, Bayer, that high serum potassium levels is dangerous. It can cause hyperkalemia, which can be deadly.

In four years, more than fifty deaths were attributed to Yaz and Yasmin in the United States alone.  Now, however, some are reporting that they fear women will be scared off oral contraceptives because of media attention to the birth control lawsuits over Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.  Especially in Canada, they fear a “pill scare” and allege that these fourth generation pills are no more dangerous than other types of oral contraceptives.

Hip Implant Lawsuit

The De Puy artificial hip was designed to last 15 years and more.  Recently, patients who had the hip implants put in just  few years ago are showing up in emergency rooms nationwide, after the implants failed and caused major damage and or pain.  The hip implant lawsuit has gained national attention outside medical circles, as the nation scrutinizes the FDA approval process that allowed the De Puy hip implants to slip through the cracks.

Major newspapers are picking up the story, where patients who received a De Puy hip implant as recently as one or two years ago, are suddenly faced with having to replace the practically new implant.  At a surprising and high rate of around 13 percent failure rate, the De Puy hip implant type Articular Surface Replacement is now considered a bad product and has been recalled.  As a result of this and requirements of new implants and medical costs, there are several large groups of people filing a hip implant lawsuit in just about every region of the country and some internationally as well.

Originally touted as the breakthrough product in hip implants, the ASR product made by De Puy was supposed to give the patient more natural movement and would last longer.  Now, doctors are finding shredded parts inside patients’ hip area when they operate to replace the faulty implants.  Large masses of dead tissue around the hip implant signify serious problems and severe pain for the patient. And each one wants retribution in a hip implant lawsuit.

The makers of the recalled hip implants are DePuy Orthopaedics, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.  They are the largest makers of hip implants in the world.  The hip implant lawsuits allege that doctors were already abandoning the ASR unit because of high rate of failure, but Johnson & Johnson continued to maintain that the ASR hip implant was fine.

McDonald’s Class Action

It’s not the hot coffee this time.  Years ago McDonald’s was the target of a now famous class action lawsuit over very hot coffee that spilled on a customer’s hand.  She won that one and was awarded millions of dollars.  Now, decades later, a Sacramento, California mother has brought legal action against the fast food giant, in what she and her lawyers hope will be a McDonald’s class action.

The case involves Happy Meals, boxed meals for kids that feature a toy inside.  They typically contain a burger, fries, and soda plus the toy.  The McDonald’s class action lawsuit alleges that the company uses the toys to lure kids to want the Happy Meal, which contains unhealthful food.  The mother claims that McDonald’s makes it difficult to say “no” to her children, when they beg for Happy Meals with toys in them and end up eating food she wants them to avoid.

But others disagree.  Sarah Palin, for one, has the opinion that it’s the parents who should be making the food choices, not the government.  However, the State of California has a strong record of passing legislation that regulates unhealthful food.  This proposed McDonald’s class action lawsuit comes just one month after the City of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted to pass legislation limiting toy giveaways in food that contains excess amounts of calories, fat or salt.

The McDonald’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Sacraments mom by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.  When this organization contacted McDonald’s for a statement, the fast food giant countered that they help parents make good nutritional choices by posting nutritional content in their restaurants and by offering more Happy Meal choices than ever before.  The Center for Science in the Public Interest responded by claiming that that typically what happens is that McDonald’s employees fill the Happy Meals with fries and sugary sodas rather than the Apple Dippers and low fat milk that’s featured on Happy Meal advertisements.