South Florida Personal Injury Lawyers

CHARLESTON, West Virginia-The lone survivor of the Sago Mine disaster and the families of two victims sued the mine owner and five other companies, alleging negligence that put the miners at grave risk as they went about their work underground.All three lawsuits filed Wednesday accuse International Coal Group and a subsidiary of shoddy operation of the mine and allege that unsafe working conditions led to the Jan. 2 explosion.

Twelve men died in the blast or succumbed during their prolonged entrapment, while survivor Randal McCloy Jr. was severely injured.

The lawsuits were filed in Kanawha County Circuit Court by McCloy and his wife Anna; Judy Bennett, widow of miner Alva Bennett; and Lily Bennett, widow of miner James Bennett.

Each suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Besides targeting ICG and a subsidiary, Wolf Run Mining, the suits accuse a number of mine suppliers of failing to provide proper safety equipment. Named were Burrell Mining Products Inc., Raleigh Mine and Industrial Supply Inc., GMS Mine Repair and CSE Corp.

ICG said it had not reviewed the suits but that it planned to fight them. The company said it expected state and federal investigations, which have not been completed, to confirm that it was not at fault.

“The outcome of the Sago mine explosion was indeed tragic; however, that tragic outcome does not translate into negligence on the part of the company,” ICG said in a statement Wednesday.

Representatives of the other companies did not immediately return phone messages.

The Bennett families’ lawsuits also accuse ICG of recklessly failing to control the dissemination of information after the explosion, which resulted in victims’ families falsely believing for nearly three hours that their loved ones were alive.

The McCloys’ lawsuit said that Randal McCloy has “endured great physical pain and suffering, permanent scarring and disfigurement, and extreme mental anguish” because of the explosion.

Doctors have been unable to pinpoint why McCloy, 27, was the only one who survived the 41 hours it took rescuers to find the crew. He left the mine battered and comatose and spent months in the hospital. He suffered brain damage from carbon monoxide poisoning.

McCloy was released from a rehabilitation hospital in March.

Monroeville, Pennsylvani-based CSE Corp. manufactured the air packs used by the miners. The lawsuits allege that at least four air packs were defective, forcing the miners to share a limited oxygen supply as they awaited rescue.

Burrell Mining Products of New Kensington, Pa., and Raleigh Mine and Industrial Supply of Mount Hope produced and distributed the foam seals used to close off an abandoned section of the mine where the explosion occurred, the lawsuits said. GMS Repair, based in Mountain Lake Park, Maryland, installed the seals at the Sago Mine, which failed in the blast.

The Bennett families’ suits alleged that the defective conditions of the companies’ products directly caused the miners’ deaths. Those suits also seek an injunction to force ICG and Wolf Run to implement the recommendations of an independent investigation commissioned by Gov. Joe Manchin.

Also Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., threw out a lawsuit by coal miners demanding that the government do more to ensure miners have working oxygen supplies and know how to use them.

The United Mine Workers of America had sought to force the Mine Safety and Health Administration to conduct periodic checks of oxygen units and conduct emergency training for all underground coal miners.

But the judge said the suit did not meet the legal requirements to force a court order.

ROCHESTER, New York-A sport utility vehicle driven by an 83-year-old man plowed into pedestrians and vendors at a public market on Thursday, injuring eight people.The driver lost control when his foot apparently slipped off the brake and hit the accelerator, and the vehicle rammed through at least eight food stalls at the Rochester Public Market, police Chief David Moore said.

At least one person suffered serious injuries that were not considered life-threatening.

The car ended up in a shed, and firefighters had to extract the driver, the police chief said. He said the driver’s injuries appeared to be minor.

CHARLESTOWN, N.H.-A rescue boat taking an injured woman to an ambulance capsized in a river, trapping her beneath it and drowning her, authorities said.Virginia Yates, 60, of Rockingham, Vt., was being rescued Tuesday afternoon after she slipped and hit her head while stepping onto a dock, said Sgt. Craig Morrocco of the Fish and Game Department.

A rescue crew took Yates onto a new flat-bottomed airboat and strapped her to a backboard. But as the boat headed to a waiting ambulance, it started taking on water and capsized, Morrocco said.

Edgar Emerson said he and Yates were on their way to visit friends when she slipped getting out of his pontoon boat on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River, which runs between both states.

She had cuts and bruises on her head and arms, and Emerson thought she might have broken her ankle, so Yates sat on shore as he boated to find a cell phone and call friends. Others persuaded him to call 911, he said.

“She didn’t want to go in the ambulance; she didn’t want to be rescued,” Emerson told the Rutland Herald.

No rescue crew members were reported injured.

The water was calm and there was no wind or rain, witnesses said.

The boat was pulled out of the water about 9 p.m. The New Hampshire Marine Patrol will investigate, Morrocco said.

More than 6,000 lawsuits have been filed in recent years against four drugs taken by millions of patients: hormone-replacement drug Prempro, birth-control patch Ortho Evra, anti-psychotic Seroquel and anti-seizure drug Neurontin.

The plaintiffs claim drugmakers failed to disclose the drugs’ risks or failed to properly test them, or both. The claims are similar to those against Merck’s painkiller Vioxx, which faces 14,000 lawsuits. Unlike Vioxx, these drugs are still being sold, and the Food and Drug Administration considers their benefits worth their risks.

The first trials have begun or are near for Prempro and Neurontin. Johnson & Johnson has started settling some Ortho Evra cases, plaintiffs’ lawyers say.

The lawsuits raise questions about whether drugmakers and the FDA pay ample attention to patient safety. Since 2000, more than 65,000 product liability lawsuits have been filed against prescription drugmakers, the most of any industry, says researcher Thomson West.

The pace isn’t likely to slow, given the number of drugs on the market, the millions of consumers taking them and the skill of plaintiffs’ lawyers in finding consumers who suffered adverse reactions, says professor Lars Noah of the University of Florida College of Law.

“The lawyers have created almost an assembly-line approach to use … against an industry that’s in tobacco-land in terms of how much people hate it,” Noah says.

Drugmaker Wyeth faces more than 5,000 cases for Prempro and Premarin, hormone-replacement drugs for menopausal symptoms. The first trial started Monday in Little Rock. Plaintiff Linda Reeves alleges she developed breast cancer as a result of taking the drugs from 1983 through 2000. Breast cancer accounts for the majority of claims.

Wyeth and plaintiffs’ lawyers refused comment, citing a judge’s gag order. Wyeth has said it did nothing wrong and that the drugs’ warnings reflected available scientific data and FDA requirements.

A study halted in 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative, found that Prempro patients had a higher risk of breast cancer, stroke and heart disease. Later that year, Wyeth added a boldface warning on Prempro, which combines estrogen and progestin, and on Premarin, an estrogen, regarding the study.

In 2003, the warnings were put in a box, making them more prominent. The drugs’ combined sales fell to $909 million last year from $2 billion in 2001.

In March, Wyeth won the first state case when a New York judge issued a summary judgment, saying the drugs’ warnings were adequate. The case is being appealed, the plaintiff’s lawyer says.

Wyeth’s exposure is not likely to be nearly as large as the $21 billion it’s paying to settle tens of thousands of claims over former diet drug fen-phen, linked to heart and lung problems. Not only are there fewer cases, but also it’s difficult to prove that a drug caused someone’s cancer — a key hurdle in most drug lawsuits, Noah says.

Plaintiffs in the Neurontin lawsuits face a similar challenge, says lawyer Mike Papantonio of Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Echsner & Proctor, which does not represent any Neurontin plaintiffs.

Neurontin plaintiffs’ lawyer Andrew Finkelstein has advocated that the FDA require a black-box suicide warning on Neurontin, which has been taken by more than 10 million people and is widely prescribed for pain and bipolar sufferers. Drugmaker Pfizer says there’s no scientific evidence linking Neurontin and suicide.

“It’s a difficult thing to get your arms around,” Papantonio says. “Like the hormone-replacement therapy cases, there are so many complicating factors.”

In December, Pfizer changed Neurontin’s label to list “suicide” and “suicide attempt” as infrequent adverse events as opposed to “suicide gesture” as a rarer event. Pfizer says it made the change because of adverse event reports filed to the FDA. The reports do not prove a drug was to blame.

Warning raised

In the Ortho Evra birth-control patch cases, plaintiffs allege that the company failed to adequately test the patch’s safety. Many of the women claim they suffered blood clots as a result of using it.

“The plaintiffs tend to be younger women, and you don’t normally see strokes or blood clots in that population,” Noah says.

The FDA last year required a warning on the patch, saying users will be exposed to 60% more estrogen than with typical birth-control pills. The warning came after the FDA and the drugmaker compared estrogen levels for the patch vs. pills. The FDA also said increased estrogen may raise the risk of clots.

When the FDA approved the patch in 2001, however, an FDA approval document said the risks were “similar to the risks of using birth-control pills.”

The patch delivers more estrogen into the bloodstream. With pills, some estrogen is lost in the digestive tract.

Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, and parent Johnson & Johnson, refused to comment specifically on the lawsuit allegations. In a general statement, it said that more than 5 million women have used the patch and that, when used as labeled, it is safe.

Settlements’ cost

Last year, drugmaker Eli Lilly took a $1 billion charge to settle about 10,500 lawsuits claiming anti-psychotic Zyprexa caused diabetes or high blood glucose.

Similar claims have been made against AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals’ Seroquel, the No. 1 anti-psychotic, with more than 16 million users since its 1997 launch. Plaintiffs’ lawyers claim AstraZeneca downplayed the diabetes risks and hid important safety information from the FDA.

AstraZeneca is confident in the drug and plans to defend itself, says spokesman Jim Minnick. He says the same lawyers who filed suit against Zyprexa are coming after Seroquel hoping for a similar result — a charge plaintiffs’ lawyers deny.

Lawsuits’ effects

Professor Noah says the threat of litigation will do little to stop companies from pursuing future drugs with such big markets.

Seroquel had 2005 sales of $2.8 billion. Neurontin, pre-generic competition, also posted annual sales in excess of $2 billion, as did the hormone-replacement drugs.

But Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, says litigation costs not only eat into research funds but change consumer behaviors. She cites a 2003 Harris Poll, commissioned by her group, that found that almost four out of 10 doctors had patients stop taking necessary medications after they heard a drug was involved in a liability lawsuit.

She says plaintiffs’ lawyers jam courts with so many lawsuits, many frivolous, that firms settle to avoid the expense and uncertainty of fighting them. “The situation has gotten out of hand,” says Rickard, whose group is affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Lawyer Papantonio says law firms stand to lose $3 million to $5 million by bringing drugmakers to trial and don’t pursue frivolous cases. “If a product hurts enough people, it gets the attention of the lawyers.”

Every year, more than one million Americans are seriously injured as a result of defective medical devices, according to the Institute of Medicine. Johnson & Johnson’s Charite artificial spinal disc has added to that number, with over 130 severe adverse events linked to its use since July 2006.

The Charite spinal disc, approved by the FDA in 2004, to relieve lower back pain by substituting the damaged disc with an artificial disc, has reportedly caused more pain than it cures.

Furthermore, studies have found that more than 50 percent of Charite patients have had fair to poor results and many suffered serious adverse events including severe back pain, neurological effects such as motor deficit or nerve root injury, numbness, kicking of vein or artery, pedicle fractures, or additional, potentially fatal surgery.

In October 2005, the “International Charite Artificial Disc Practice Group,” was formed based on the belief that many Charite patients in the U.S. and Europe have suffered serious harm from the artificial spinal disc. Additionally, the attorneys claim “Johnson & Johnson is responsible for manufacturing a medical device they knew or should have known was unreasonably dangerous in an attempt to capture some of the lucrative multi billion dollar back surgery market.”

Dr. Charles Rosen, an associate professor of spine surgery at the University of California at Irvine, called for an immediate product recall of Charite alleging numerous fundamental errors in J&J’s study of the device.

Chicago-based personal injury attorney Pete Flowers is representing over 200 clients who claimed they have suffered complications associated with Charite. So far, Flowers has filed 28 lawsuits against DePuy Spine (a division of J&J) that allege Charite is defective and J&J negligently marketed the disc and failed to adequately warn of the product’s dangers.

Experts predict J&J will be hit with more and more Charite lawsuits in the next several months. Since the disc’s approval, more than 5,000 people in the U.S. have received the implant.

A new study warns that approximately one in three patients who took the acne drug Accutane experienced a rise in cholesterol levels and more than 40 percent showed increased levels of triglycerides, or blood fats—a higher percentage than what previous studies have indicated.

“This is a side effect we have known about all along. We’ve been monitoring patients since the day the drug came on the market,” said Dr. Stephen Stone, president of the American Academy of Dermatology.

“The only thing that’s different is the number of patients who have elevated cholesterol or triglyceride levels is greater than the number stated in the original package insert,” he added.

Researchers also discovered that about 10 percent of Accutane patients develop high levels of a particular liver enzyme—a risk experts are downplaying.

Currently, the drug label warns that about 25 percent of patients may notice a rise in triglycerides and 15 percent may experience an increase in liver enzymes. Other research has indicated even less of a risk of side effects.

The new study, published in the Archives of Dermatology, evaluated the frequency of abnormal test results among almost 14,000 patients between the ages of 13 to 50 who used Accutane from 1995 to 2002.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found that 44 percent of the lab results showed high triglycerides levels, 31 percent high cholesterol, and more than 10 percent had high levels of liver enzymes while taking the drug.

Researchers claim that these abnormal test results are not necessarily indicative of a bad medical outcome. However, they are concerned that these elevated blood fat levels could put Accutane users at risk of “metabolic syndrome,” which refers to a number of unhealthy factors including cholesterol abnormalities, hypertension, hyperglycemia, and more. Some studies suggest those with metabolic syndrome have almost a two-fold risk for developing heart disease.

Doctors are urged to monitor Accutane patients and advise them of a healthy diet and exercise plan to help beat the drug’s adverse effects.

Accutane has been linked to numerous other side effects; the most serious is the significantly increased risk of birth defects in newborns of mother’s who took the drug while pregnant.

Patients taking a widely prescribed prostate drug should alert their eye doctors before undergoing cataract surgery to avoid complications, several medical groups said Tuesday.

Advance warning can allow surgeons to modify their technique during the common operation and avoid complications seen in patients who take Flomax and similar drugs to treat enlargement of the prostate, the groups said.

The drugs, called alpha-blockers, appear to impair a muscle in the iris, the colored portion of the eye. The iris must be stimulated during surgery to replace the clouded lens of the eye to allow the opening in its center, the pupil, to dilate. The drugs seem to cause the iris to unexpectedly flap or billow.

Any unexpected movement during surgery can cause injuries to the iris and other complications, said Dr. David F. Chang, a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of California, San Francisco and a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Surgeons can use tiny hooks to keep the pupil open or administer stronger dilating medicines directly inside the eye to accommodate the problem, called intraoperative floppy iris syndrome, Chang said.

Preliminary results from a recent study suggest there are no more complications following modified surgery on patients taking Flomax compared to operations on patients who don’t take Flomax or similar drugs. The drugs typically are taken by men, although they are prescribed to some women for urinary retention.

Patients considering cataract surgery do not need to stop taking the drugs, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery and the American Urological Association said in a joint warning.

The drugs’ labels, approved by the Food and Drug Administration, already mention the potential complications.

The son of an 91-year-old woman who died slumped in her wheelchair after Hurricane Katrina _ an image that came to symbolize the government’s slow response to the catastrophic storm _ sued the city and state Thursday.Herbert Freeman Jr. accuses numerous state agencies and the city of New Orleans of gross negligence and willful misconduct in the death of his mother, Ethel Freeman. He claims he was ordered by New Orleans police to seek shelter at the city’s convention center, even though no aid was available and there was no way out.

‘’Let’s not forget, she survived the storm. The storm didn’t get her. She didn’t survive the rescue,’’ said John Paul Massicot, an attorney representing the family.

The lawsuit, filed in state Civil District Court in New Orleans, seeks unspecified monetary damages.

On Feb. 9, 2003, plaintiff Patti Adler, 52, unemployed, was riding her bicycle in a Miami residential neighborhood when two large Great Danes owned by Angela Antonick escaped from her residence by digging a hole under the fence, and then attacked Adler. Adler tried to escape by climbing a tree but she was dragged down by the dogs. Two passing motorists stopped their cars and honked their horns in an effort to frighten the dogs away from further attack. Adler was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital.Adler sued Antonick for liability and the owner of the home, Rose Filmore, under a premises liability theory.Plaintiffs’ counsel claimed Antonick’s fence was poorly maintained and was often breached by the dogs. Testimony was presented of Antonick’s neighbors who stated they witnessed the dogs wander the neighborhood on several occasions.

Plaintiff’s counsel alleged that the dogs were not given food or water for more than a month and that caused them to become ravenous and prone to attack, and Antonick didn’t monitor them.

Plaintiff’s counsel alleged that the combination of a known breached fence and ill-fed dogs created a foreseeable zone of risk.

The defendants failed to appear in court.

Adler was mauled by the two dogs. She suffered bite wounds all over her body including open wounds to her shoulder, forehead, scalp and buttocks. She had a distal radius fracture to her right wrist. She had 300 stitches to her skull and had surgery to clean out her wounds, resulting in a hospital stay of four days. Adler had a homecare attendant for about a month.

Adler did not have health insurance and incurred past medical bills of $24,926.61. Thomas Zaydon, a plastic surgeon whose records were used at trial, said Adler will have permanent scarring and disfigurement regardless of any future reconstructive surgeries performed. Zaydon opined that even at a conservative estimate Adler would have medical bills approaching $100,000 for future reconstructive surgery and multiple hospitalizations.

Judge Jon Gordon found Antonick liable for the dog attack and awarded damages of $1.9 million. Gordon declined to assess damages against Filmore because the dogs were not on the property at the time of the attack and she did not actually own the dogs.

Defense counsel for Antonick is appealing the decision.