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.

The verdict is related to the accident that occurred on February 4, 2004 when the woman, Louise Scialdone, was waiting at a bus stop near McGrath Highway in Somerville, Massachusetts. Scialdone, as usual, was using her walker because of her arthritic problems. The driver of a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus lost control, fishtailed onto the sidewalk and threw Louise Scialdone 5 feet in the air. Her head hit a car parked nearby. She was hospitalized for 13 hours and after a few days was hospitalized again.

Since the accident Louisa, earlier an avid reader, has been left with the mental capacity of a 3-year-old. She has some good days and some bad, say her attorneys, and she is in need of round-the-clock care. Her memory constantly falters, and she has trouble maintaining her balance. She is also extremely sensitive to noises and light. In short, her life has become extremely hard. A woman who formerly enjoyed playing with her now 14-year-old grandchild herself only has the mental capacity of a 3-year-old.

One witness to the accident said the driver of the MBTA bus was speeding during icy conditions, always an invitation to risk and danger. Lawyers for the Metropolitan Bay Transportation Authority tried to pin the blame for Scialdone’s extraordinary injuries on her arthritis. That’s plain absurd. There’s no indication that Louise had any other health problem apart from her arthritis. In short, this was a woman who had every right to live out her golden years playing with her grandkids, and living out the retired life. Instead, she can hardly recognize her younger grandchild.

If you thought the driver of the bus that got Scialdone into this shape received fair and severe punishment for her actions, you’d be in for a rude shock. The driver, Tracy Sullivan, was suspended for a grand period of one day before being reinstated to her job. She hasn’t been made to pay for her reckless behavior. If this is the seriousness with which MBTA takes its driver’s reckless driving, it should probably put a “Warning” notice on windshields of all its buses, so everyone who comes in its path can jump out of the way and save their lives. By going soft on the driver, MBTA has sent a clear message to the rest of its employees and the public that it couldn’t care less about public safety.

One hopes that this settlement, while it won’t do anything to reverse Louse’s condition, will at least make her life a little more bearable. She needs $200,000 a year worth of round-the-clock care and now she has a means of affording it.

If you or a loved-one have suffered brain injuries in an accident, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury attorney. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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.

The family of Gandy filed claims against the city of Anaheim, California claiming that root-trimming exercises that were meant to prevent tree roots from cracking the sidewalk actually weakened the roots of the tree, so it became unstable in high winds. The family also alleged that the city failed to trim the trees, and this partially caused the fall which killed Gandy. They initially asked for $2.4 million in the lawsuit, but seemed satisfied with the settlement.

While we are happy that the Gandy family received some compensation for their loss, and the fact that they now have a settlement that should help them with their needs, the settlement probably should have been higher. The city admitted to having undertaken root-trimming exercises to prevent roots from cracking the sidewalk. This makes the accident an act of complete negligence on the part of the city, which probably should have figured a multi-ton tree would need full root support to keep it from blowing over in the case of strong winds. Maybe the city made the argument that Gandy should not have been sitting in a parked car below a tree during heavy winds. The city should have also realized that a 50-foot tree is a hazard even with an untampered root system. Large trees, which can annihilate a person or vehicle, should be confined to gardens or parks. When a 50-foot tree is growing on a residential street, the possibility of the tree actually falling down because of its weak roots needs to be weighed as a risk factor.

Trees, which should have spreading roots, should not be planted in areas where they can grow to large heights and pose a danger to residents. This entire terrible tragedy seems to have occurred because of the root trimming exercise, and you can’t help feeling that no caution was exercised in the planting of these trees.

Like Gandy’s family pointed out, the tree’s top could have been trimmed to reduce the impact of the crash. No one can deny that it was a horrible way for a person to meet his end, and one that could have been avoided.

For the Gandy family to have lost a beloved member is bad enough, but to lose him in such an unnecessary and avoidable fashion is criminal. $700,000 may not begin to cover the extent of their damage.

If you have had a loved-one killed due to negligence, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury law firm. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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.

The woman, Donna Scroggin, accused Wyeth of inadequately warning patients that their hormone-replacement drugs could actually increase the risk of breast cancer. Wyeth wasn’t the only one named in the suit. Upjohn, maker of Provera, was also named.

Scroggin had taken the hormone-replacement drug for over 10 years before contracting breast cancer. Her cancer was severe enough to necessitate a mastectomy.

The cases over the hormone replacement therapy began going to trial in 2006, and since then Wyeth has lost four out of the seven trials that have taken place thus far. Two earlier cases were won by the company, and its still faces over 5300 lawsuits over its hormone-replacement drug.

The company has managed to evade greater monetary damage thus far. Another Little Rock women lost her case against Wyeth, while an Ohio woman who was awarded $3 million had her decision overturned.

The biggest verdict against the company came in Reno, Nevada where a jury awarded $123 million to a group of three women who alleged that the company’s hormone-replacement drugs had been instrumental in giving them cancer. But that amount was cut down to $58 million. Although the amount had been dramatically reduced, it’s still a substantial settlement and lawyers who’ve been involved in the lawsuits against Wyeth say the company could begin to see more verdicts not going their way.

Making a drug that’s being proven to cause cancer in women has not left Wyeth unaffected. The company closed down its plant in New York where it manufactured the drug and over 10 percent of the workforce has been cut.

The Food and Drug Administration too seems to be adopting a cautious policy approving drugs from a company that many in the pharmaceutical business say puts health under profits. A number of recent Wyeth applications have been turned down in recent months by the FDA. Their osteoporosis drug Bazedoxifene was rejected because it was found to lead to strokes and blood clot issues, its menopause drug was rejected because it was found connected to heart and liver complications. Its schizophrenia drug bifepronox was reportedly not found to be as effective as other drugs already on the market.

It’s good to see the FDA taking a harder stand against companies like Wyeth who seem to teat patients who take their drugs as some kind of laboratory rats. We can expect more verdicts as each of the 5300 suits reached a conclusion, one way or another.

If you have suffered adverse side effects from a dangerous drug, don’t hesitate to look for an aggressive California personal injury law firm to fight for you. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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.

How important cars seats are in protecting kids from injuries can be seen in this one instance.

The accident occurred on the 19th of February at the intersection between Monte Vista and Eucalyptus. It was 7:25 am and the eight children, all aged between 3 and 4, were off to a Head Start Program. A white Infiniti, witnesses say, ran a red light and came towards the bus, hitting it from the side. The impact of the collision was strong enough for the bus to veer off road and through patches of shrubbery. It struck three parked cars on the way before coming to a stop in a parking lot. It was a bumpy ride for sure, but none of the kids in the bus suffered major injuries. They were all strapped safely in their car seats. According to the manager of the First Student Bus Company, it’s common practice at the company to put kids under 40 pounds in weight in child car seats that are secured with seat belts.

The bus driver and two other adults in the bus also suffered minor injuries and were taken to hospital. Regardless of the lack of major injures, witnesses report that the accident had a devastating impact. There was a loud explosion like noise, witnesses said, and one of the cars that the bus struck on its way off the road was turned over on its side and crushed under the impact.

This is what car seats are supposed to do. They are supposed to protect our kids when adults make mistakes on the road, and they are supposed to keep them safe regardless of the nature of the accident. This is why car seats are recommended in cars for children.

When a defective car seat, however, makes its way into the marketplace, the result can never be good. The Evenflo recall of car seats has come in the wake of allegations of defective car seats that have led to the deaths of some children. Considering how helpless kids are and unable to protect themselves in the event of an accident, a car seat company that puts defective car seats in the market has much to answer for.

Parents in Chino Valley have more than just divine intervention to thank for the safety of their kids today.

If you have a child who was hurt in a bus crash, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury law firm. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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.

Officers responding to the crash found a 27-year-old old pregnant woman inside the car who reported that the pick up truck had hit her van. Apparently, when the woman approached the truck to confront the man, he took off, even though his truck had been badly damaged. The woman and her two passengers were taken to a hospital with minor injuries. The driver of the truck, who is believed to have been intoxicated, kept on driving even though fluids were leaking from his truck and it was dropping debris on the way.

It was another driver’s presence of mind that finally led to the drunk driver being arrested. He noticed the truck was racing on ahead (which should give you some idea of how drunk the man was. What kind of person doesn’t realize that his truck is falling apart as he’s driving?) and he noticed that there was smoke coming from the back of the truck.

He followed the car right up to the apartments where the man was living and then noted down the address. He then called the cops who arrived a while later. They arrested him as he was trying to escape by sneaking under the bottom of another car. When arrested, the suspect was bleeding from his hands and mouth and was highly intoxicated.

Her also did not speak English, and was reportedly so drunk he could barely stand straight. His injuries were severe and he could not be given a breathalyzer test.

It’s quite certain the man was drinking even without the results of the test. His cousin who lives in the same building apparently told the cops that he had been drinking all night.

This was hardly a first time offense for the man. Records showed that his license had been expired, suspended and revoked a total of seven times. The very first suspension was in 2002.

That a man with such a history of road abuse was allowed to be behind the wheel of a truck is disturbing. Authorities will have to begin enforcing stricter policies if more such accidents are to be avoided.

If you have been injured by a drunk driver, you need the help of an aggressive California personal injury lawyer. Contact an attorney at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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.

We don’t expect such actions from the people who grill our burgers, let alone condoning such behavior from the body funded by our tax dollars that seems to have such scant disregard for public health. To add to an already lengthy list of FDA scandals comes the Bayer episode.

Last year, the FDA voted to keep Bayer’s anti-bleeding cardiac drug Trasylol on the market. This was even after studies conducted by Dennis Mangano, the founder of the Ischemia Research and Education Organization, a non-profit body, showed that patients who took Trasylol were more prone to heart attacks, strokes and renal failure. There is no indication of the reason, which prompted this action by the FDA. But a few days later, the FDA was contacted by a Harvard School of Public Health official who said that he had been hired by Bayer to review the effects of Trasylol as compared ot other anti-bleeding drugs. His conclusion? The exact same as Dr Mangano. Trysalol seemed to expose patients to greater risks of renal failure and heart attacks. When confronted with this research – and here’s where you begin to get a little frightened at the extent of deceit prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry – Bayer said it had “mistakenly” neglected to furnish details about the study.

Neglected? How can you neglect to mention that you had conducted a study that evaluated data from a grand total of 67,000 bypass patients?

Even more shockingly, the FDA let Bayer get away with nothing but a slap on the wrist. An episode which should have logically led to the drug maker being banned from applying for new drug applications was all but ignored.

Finally now, new studies have shown that patients who take Trasylol are 27 times more likely to suffer serious heart ailments and strokes than those on a rival drug.

Bayer isn’t budging from its position. The company maintains that there have been discrepancies in the findings and claims that the risk benefit analysis weighs in Trasylol’s favor.

Bayer suspended sales of Trasylol last November, after the most recent study showed evidence of a connection between use of the drug and unexplainable deaths, but there is every indication that the company doesn’t intend to withdraw the drug from the market altogether. Besides causing heart attacks and strokes, Trasylol is many times costlier than other choices. The difference in cost is enough to save as much as $250 million a year for healthcare, and a billion dollars on dialyses very year.

Ultimately, it’s the patients who suffer when the FDA so blatantly ignores evidence against a drug. The healthcare system suffers because of the huge costs of this drug. The FDA risks looking like a paper tiger.

The only one who benefits is Bayer.

If you have suffered adverse side effects or a loved-one has been killed due to a dangerous drug, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury lawyer. Contact an attorney at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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.

Now, new clues are emerging as the investigation into the crash progresses, and the tiny community of Cottonwood, where the crash occurred, begins to seek answers as to why its young had to go in this manner.

The first clue seems to point to a van which, as a witness stated, ran a stop sign and rammed into the side of the bus causing the driver to lose control and eventually leading the bus to roll over.

Matters are still under investigation, but there have been media reports that the driver of the van, a 23-year-old woman, possibly didn’t have a valid driving license and that she had been cited in an earlier incident in 2006, where she pled guilty to driving without a license. These reports haven’t been confirmed, but if there is any truth to these reports, we hope parents won’t hesitate to pursue legal action against the woman.

Another issue that’s come up after the crash, and one that has a potentially greater impact for Cottonwood residents is the stretch of highway where the crash occurred. Reports are emerging that Highway 23 has been dangerous for a while now and authorities have been lax in their response to fears about its safety.

Highway 23 is the artery that connects southwestern Minnesota with other parts of the state and it’s just two lanes wide. Authorities have long denied that the road is dangerous. According to Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) engineers, it’s a fairly flat road with a shoulder that is 10 feet wide. There have been also no major traffic accidents at the intersection, they claim. Do we have to wait for accidents like the Lakeview school bus tragedy to wake them up to the fact that something about the road’s design might cause accidents?

The authorities themselves admit that traffic has increased dramatically on highway 23 with at least 4000 vehicles making their way through the stretch on any given day. With such a high volume of traffic on what is still a relatively narrow road for the kind of traffic it handles, chances of accidents are greatly increased. The more vehicles sharing the road, the lesser margin you have to correct your vehicle before an accident.

According to David Sturrock, a professor at Southwestern Minnesota State University in Marshall, the state could do its part to make the intersection less dangerous. In fact he has asked the MnDOT engineers to take a closer look at some of the intersections on Highway 23, where some fairly serious accidents have been reported over the last couple of years.

Do we really have to wait until more people die before we take action? Whatever happened to preventive measures? How many accidents have to occur and how many lives have to be lost before the transportation authorities acknowledge there is a problem?

Knee jerk reactions when a major accident takes place are not the solution. This is not true only for Minnesota, but around the country where badly designed highways regularly maim and take lives with authorities being too slow to respond.

If you have a loved-one who has been killed due to dangerous highway conditions, you need the help of a California personal injury lawyer. Contact an attorney at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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.

That’s what seems to be happening with Johnson & Johnson’s latest recall involving its Duragesic patch. A defect in the patch could lead to the contents of the patch leaking and causing accidental overdoses. The drug that’s contained in the patch is Fentanyl, a highly addictive opiate that is up to 80 times more potent than morphine. The patch, it is now believed, could have a cut along the drug reservoir, exposing users to the possibility of an overdose. The defective patch has already claimed victims, and their families have filed million dollar lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson.

The Duragesic patches have been riddled with problems right from the beginning. In 2004, several 75 microgram-per-hour patches were recalled after they were found to accidentally leak. The FDA issued a warning pointing out the dangers of an overdose to those who used the patch. The FDA at that point chose to put the blame on the users, rather than on the company. The argument was that the patch had not been placed properly, and this caused the leak. They even ordered all patch makers to create medication guides to help users make use of the patch properly.

By 2005, at least 120 deaths were reported, both from Johnson & Johnson’s brand of patches as well as other generic brands. The FDA issued another warning that death was a possibility because of these accidental overdoses. Now, comes this new recall.

Johnson & Johnson says it currently faces 72 lawsuits over the patches. Two lawsuits have already been settled. In one, a Texas state court ordered the company to pay a family $772,000, while in another the company paid a family $5.5 million.

Johnson & Johnson can’t be too concerned about the lawsuit and their monetary effect on the company. Duragesic patches are the company’s eighth-highest-selling product with sales last year exceeding $1.16 billion.

Many victims’ families are calling for a complete recall of all versions of the patch currently out in the market. A pharmaceutical company shouldn’t be able to get away with so many recalls of the same product. What it amounts to is using consumers as guinea pigs to test its patches. Until Johnson & Johnson can perfect its patch technology and guarantee that no accidental overdoses will occur, the FDA should step in and call for a complete recall of the product. One more strike, and Johnson & Johnson should be out.

If you or a loved-one have been injured or killed by a defective medical product, you need help from an experienced California personal injury attorney. Don’t wait until it is too late, contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group immediately for a free consultation.

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.

It’s not just the size of the recall that has attracted the attention (the earlier record was 35 million pounds of ground beef recalled in 1999, which now seems like chicken feed compared to this new recall). It’s the level of standards at the plant.

The Humane Society of America in an exposé managed to film sick cows too feeble to get up, being prodded in an attempt to make them stand. Forklifts are seen being used in the video as cows very obviously ill, are forced to stand. A look at the video and you would be forgiven for thinking this was happening in a third world country.

These are far from healthy cows, and the plant had five health inspectors from the Department of Agriculture assigned to it. A Department of Agriculture investigation showed that officials at the company did not alert veterinarians when its cows became too sick to walk. As seen in the video, the cows are being forced to stand up so they can pass safety inspections! What triggered the recall was the fear that these cows showed symptoms of the dreaded mad cow disease. The government has banned these kinds of cows, known as downer cows (those that can’t walk), from the food supply.

The Department of Agriculture on its own can’t issue a recall. It can however withdraw its inspectors from a plant, which they have done in this case. Not a day too early. There doesn’t seem to have been a lot of “inspecting” these inspectors were doing at the plant anyway.

There’s no way of knowing where most of the possibly infected meat ended up. The meat can be traced back to two years ago, and has been distributed through countless distribution networks, and has made its way though to thousands of schools across the country. Some schools immediately lifted beef from the menu, but the worry is that all we can do is wait to see if any possible health effects show up.

The Humane Society president asks the question we all want answered. How could the presence of such downer cows have gone unnoticed day after day in the presence of an USDA oversight system at the plant? What are these inspectors using tax dollars for? How could they have not noticed these very sick and very mistreated cows?

The USDA, of course is showing the same degree of ineptitude that it has in earlier recalls. There’s nothing to worry about, they say, since most of the beef has already been consumed. In other words, nobody’s dead yet from eating the meat, and so we should probably not make too much of a fuss over it.

It’s this lackadaisical approach to food safety that’s disturbing and quite frankly, frightening.

Incidences of e. coli have increased in the past couple of years, last year alone saw 21 e. coli related beef recalls, and experts have no idea why.

Slaughtering animals too sick to stand can’t be helping matters.

If you have suffered adverse effects from recalled food, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury law firm. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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.

Now we hear that the FDA effectively broke its own rules by failing to inspect a Chinese plant that manufactures a drug widely used in the US. The drug in question is the blood thinning medication, heparin, and the drug was approved for sale without the mandatory inspection of the Chinese plant’s facility.

This failure to inspect Chinese plants that export drugs to the US has already claimed its first victims. Baxter International has announced that it’s suspending sale of its brand of heparin after 4 patients died and 350 people suffered complications. Some of the complications are reported to be serious. Baxter says they sourced the active ingredient from a company called Scientific Protein, which has plants in Wisconsin and China. A spokeswoman for Baxter said that there had been slight differences in the shipment that Scientific Protein sent to them, but reiterated that Scientific Protein had been a good supplier in the past. This trust in their suppliers is very touching, but when 4 people are dead and hundreds have fallen ill after having heparin injections, someone has to take responsibility. For now, both Baxter and the FDA are pleading that they don’t really know for sure that the contaminated ingredient came from China. In fact, they’re not sure where it came from at all. Reassuring.

All responsibility, of course, rests on the FDA. The agency has been found guilty by the Government Accountability Office of neglecting oversight at foreign drug manufacturing plants. The rules say that the FDA must inspect domestic facilities every two years. In practice, the FDA has in inspected foreign drug plants only once in thirteen years. That’s more than a decade of allowing a plant to manufacture drugs and ship them across to the US, without ever knowing what was going on out there.

When it comes to China, the record is even worse. A total of 700 Chinese drug plants have been approved by the FDA but its only able to inspect 10 to 20 of them a year. The FDA calculates that it will take 40 to 50 years to inspect them all. The possibilities of what could happen in these 50 years are too frightening to contemplate.

To make matters worse, the FDA, it is now apparent, has varying accounts of the number of Chinese plants that it imports drug ingredients from.

A house investigative subcommittee investigating the matter has expressed its concern about the fact that the FDA had so little information available on the Chinese plants in question in the early days of the Baxter incident.

The FDA is at this moment scrambling to close the barn door after the horse has escaped – it’s preparing to send its inspection officers to the Chinese plant. There is a pattern here – of inferior Chinese production methods and the FDA’s corresponding negligence in inspecting products that arrive from that country- and it has terrifying implications for our nation’s health.

If you have suffered adverse side effects from dangerous drugs, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury law firm. Contact the lawyers at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.