Nuvaring Lawsuit

Nuvaring, manufactured by Merck & Co, Inc, is a small, intervaginal device, used to prevent pregnancy. The device is inserted once a month. The device was initially praise for its low dosage and easy use, as compared to the birth control pills’ daily regimen.

Nuvaring is now being linked to various, and sometimes serious, problems and side effects. Nuvaring is a birth control ring containing desogestrel. Desogestrel is referred to as “third generation” oral contraceptives. The Food and Drug Administration released a statement in 1995 stating that “new studies indicate about a two-fold increase in the risk of venous blood clots associated with products containing desogestrel.” Essentially, Nuvaring thickens the blood, making it easier to clot.

Problems associated with Nuvaring include:

• -Stroke,
• -Blood clots,
• -Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT), and
• -Pulmonary embolism.

Nuvaring Lawyers in South Carolina

These problems and side effects can be life threatening.

In a study published in Contraception 2010, two cases of DVT were reported out of 72 women using contraceptive vaginal rings.

Other possible problems can be derived from mechanical issues with the device and cases involving improper insertation, placement, and expulsion of the device. Others have claimed to feel the device during sexual intercourse. Other side effects include headache, nausea, vaginitis, and leucorrhea (thing white to yellow vaginal discharge), among others. These side effects are relatively mild and can be treated.

If you have experienced DVT, stroke, or other serious side effect resulting from Nuvaring, contact the defective drug attorneys at the Strom Law Firm for a free consultation, 803.252.4800.

Give Us a Call Today

You need an experienced products liability attorney to protect your rights. The defective drug and device lawyers at the Strom Law Firm are experienced in investigating the injury, determining all potentially responsible parties, and proving that the defective product caused your injuries.

As your products liability attorneys, we know how to protect your rights, establish liability for the product and recover the maximum amount of compensation for a defective product injury available to you under the law.  Call us today at 803.252.4800.

Miami’s Jungle Island is giving a whole new meaning to the term monkey business by participating in a new experiment between computers and apes.

The park is letting six orangutans use an iPad as part of a mental stimulus program. The experiment’s goal is to begin to bridge the intellectual gap between humans and apes. Linda Jacobs, who oversees the program, said apes are quite intelligent, but are hindered by their inability to express their thoughts vocally.

The software, which was originally designed for humans with autism, displays pictures of various objects. A trainer then names one of the objects, and the ape presses the related button.

But when it comes to animals using it, the iPad has limitations. The small touch screen makes it hard for orangutans to press the right buttons and the iPad won’t respond to fingernails. The high price of the iPads also inhibits what they apes can do with them considering iPads are breakable and the orangutans tend to monkey around.

Birute Mary Galdikas, founder of Orangutan Foundation International, said in captivity, orangutans demonstrate remarkable creative-thinking skills, specifically in their ability to escape enclosures.

The park hopes the new form of communication will help more people understand the apes, since in the past the only form of communication has been sign language.

A new study of teen driving has found that the use of electronic devices is the most common distracted driving behavior for teens; teenage girls are twice as likely as boys to use cell phones or other electronic devices while driving.

In a technology-fueled world, young drivers can often find themselves distracted by as many as three different devices at once (including cell phones, iPods, and GPS’s).

As part of a  study released Monday by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety 50 video cameras were placed in cars of families with young drivers. Data recording was triggered by certain events like sudden braking and abrupt turns while teenagers were driving unsupervised.

Interestingly,  distracted driving  tendencies were related to gender. According to the study:

• Females were nearly twice as likely as males to use an electronic device while driving, and overall were nearly 10 percent more likely to be observed engaging in other distracted behaviors, like reaching for an object in the vehicle and eating or drinking.
• Males were roughly twice as likely to turn around in their seats while driving, and were also more likely to communicate with people outside of the vehicle.

 The findings are noteworthy given that distracted driving can contribute to South Carolina traffic accidents, injuries and fatalities.

 According to CBS, authors of the study said police officers in North Carolina (where the study took place) have not made a concerted effort to enforce teen driver cell phone restrictions. According to court records, fewer than 50 citations were issued for violations of teen driver cell phone restriction during 2010.

Similarly, in the 10 months since the City of Columbia outlawed texting while driving, city police have yet to write a ticket for it, according to The State.

Given that traffic crashes remain the leading cause of death for young Americans, the AAA Foundation has an established focus area on teen driver safety. For more information on this issue, and to see the full report and associated video clips, visit www.AAAFoundation.org.

We urge you to talk to your teen about the seriousness of distracted driving.

An NYPD police officer is being described as the “luckiest unlucky man ever” after surviving a brutal stab wound to the skull.

Officer Eder Loor, 28, found himself involved in an altercation with a bipolar arrestee while on duty. During the altercation, Terrence Hale, 26, plunged the three-and-a-half inch blade deep into Loor’s left temple. Loor, unaware that he had been critically injured, pulled the blade out of his head.

Loor was then rushed to Mount Sinai Medical Center where doctor’s described the blade as entering, “a millimeter from everything”. Surgeons worked tirelessly to stabilize Loor and repair the damage.

According to doctors, the blade passed half an inch below an area of the brain that controls motor functions. The blade was another half-inch from entering a collection of nerves which control vision.  The blade did, however, cut the nerves that give sensation to the face and damaged a major artery.

The full extent of Loor’s injuries is not currently known, however, he is said to be awake and talking.

Loor’s wife, Dina Loor, who is expecting the couple’s first son, said during a press conference that her husband’s first words to her in the hospital were, “Babe, I’m fine. It just hurts.”

Loor responded to the call at a housing complex in East Harlem. Hale’s mother contacted police after Hale had stopped taking medication for his bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The violence broke out when Loor told Hale he would have to be taken to the hospital as his mother had asked.

After the incident, Hale was arrested and charged with attempted aggravated murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Hale’s mother said the police mishandled the situation and was planning on contacting a lawyer.

“They did not get backup, and they did not do their job right. My son was not feeling well; he was sick and said he wanted to go to the hospital,” she stated.

Protecting the Safety of South Carolina Children

When you are expecting a child, purchasing a child safety seat is one of the most important decisions to consider.  There are a variety of options to choose from, and although safety and protecting your child is foremost in your mind, your child  may not be as safe in the back seat of your vehicle as you think.

There are many reasons that your child’s car seat may not work as expected, including the fact that they are difficult to install because of the vehicle back-seat designs of most cars, despite the fact that design changes were recommended more than a decade ago.

In fact, only 21 out of 98 vehicles tested met all of the requirements for ease of use, according to a report done by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. Shockingly, seven of the vehicles tested didn’t meet any of the requirements.

The government mandated an attachment system, known as LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) to be put in place after inspections frequently found child-safety seats were installed incorrectly.

A 2004 report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found three out of four child seats and booster seats had “critical misuse” issue that could increase the risk of injury to the child in the event of an accident.

During the study, cars, SUVS, and pickup trucks were tested to determine whether child-seat anchors were in fact visible, easily accessible, and usable without excessive force. Excessive force was defined as the amount of force used to secure the seat. If 40 pounds of force was required for proper installation, the vehicle didn’t pass.

The study also found that belt buckles and other seat hardware could get in the way of the child-seat connectors, and that the anchors could become buried in the seat and therefore be out of reach. Researchers futher found that parents fail to use the upper tether that is designed to secure the top part of the car seat in the event of a crash. The straps prevent front-facing child seats from moving forward too much in a crash, which can cause the child to suffer head and neck injuries.

Car companies are now on the defensive making statements attacking child-seat makers. Chrysler stated “there are many different sizes and shapes of child restraint systems on the market” that automakers have to consider. Ford said LATCH “ease of use…is highly dependent on the design of the child-restraint hardware that attaches to the anchor.”

Joseph Colella became an advocate for chld safety after his 3-year-old niece died in a 1994 crash in a child seat that didn’t fit the car. Collela has pushed to make child seats more compatible. He is credited with helping the effort that lead to the federal recommendation of LATCH.

“Compatibility issues need to be taken seriously by manufacturers,” Collela says. “A 2012 vehicle needs to work with today’s car seat designs, but it must also be compatible with models developed over the next 20 years.”

Currently, trade groups are representing car-and child-seat makers are working to address such issues.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration offers free car seat inspections.  For a list of local inspections sites, click here. 

Have questions?  Contact the Strom Law Firm, LLC .   We are conveniently located in Columbia, South Carolina and offer a free consultation to discuss your legal rights.  803.252.4800.

Defending an IRS Audit

Budget cuts, a hiring freeze, staffing reductions, an increasingly complex tax code, and a surge in tax refund identity fraud, could decrease the number of IRS audits   conducted by the IRS this year.

The IRS’ mission has been historically to detect and stop fraud while responding to taxpayer needs. This mission is becoming difficult due to lack of staffing and reduced budgets. The IRS has increased the number and percentage of audits on all individual tax returns in the past decade, but the rates have plateaued at 1.1 % for the fiscal years of 2010 and 2011.

This translates into one out of 90 filers being audited, said Michael Lacey, a Georgia Institute of Technology mathematics professor. In  a real world scenario, a person would have be  more likely to roll six dice and have six unique numbers appear on the first role than to be audited, stated Lew Lefton, Internet technology chief at Georgia Tech’s math school.

These statistics hold true for most middle class families with wealthier filers facing higher audit rates, IRS data shows.

IRS Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller said the audit rate “may drop a little bit this year” because the agency reassigned workers to help deal with a jump in cases of identity-theft related tax-refund fraud.

This low audit rate is not a first for this country. From 2001-2006 the overall audit rate dropped below 1%.

Miller stated the IRS is not worried about the dip in audit rates saying “We may not be able to do everything, but we’re going to ensure that we do what we have to do.”

Last year the IRS processed more than 234 million tax returns, bringing in more than $2.4 trillion to fund the federal government. The net tax gap (the difference between what taxpayers owe in a year and what’s not paid on time because of mistakes or fraud) totals $385 billion, just below the market value of all ExxonMobil stock.

Computer Technology Combats IRS Fraud

The budget for IRS’ 2012 fiscal year totals $11.8 billion, which is a 2.1 % cut from 2011. This budget cut marks the second consecutive budget reductions.

Nina Olson, National Taxpayer Advocate, stated in her 2012 annual report to Congress, the decreases have left the IRS “unable to adequately detect and address non-compliance, requiring honest taxpayers to should a disproportionately large share of the tax burden.

These cuts may not be the only cuts the IRS receives. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo, chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Financial Service and General Government, stated, “The IRS may have to bear a greater proportion” of future cuts.

Computer technology is currently used to help in spotting potential abuses.

The electronic screening uses what the IRS calls, tolerance levels. Tolerance levels are secretive dollar values or other measures, which are programmed into IRS computers as trigger points. Basically, if a tax return falls within the tolerance levels, it is unlikely to be manually checked. The IRS now suspects scammers are testing the tolerance levels with fraudulent tax returns.

A 2008 audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which oversees the IRS, shows that the tax agency failed to use empirical data to set tolerance levels and evaluate their effectiveness. As Mark Matthews, the IRS deputy commissioner for services and enforcement from 2003 to 2006 stated, some tolerance levels were “picked by the seat of the pants”.

IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said tolerance level protocols and effectiveness are now checked annually.

IRS Fraud and Tax Returns

This past year, the IRS was able to block more than $14 billion in refunds from fraudulent tax returns, much of it related to identity theft.

J. Russell George, the head of the Inspector General’s office said last month that Congress should expand IRS access to wage and withholding data that the Department of Health and Human Services gets from employers for Social Security records. This would assist in spotting fraudulent refund claims by checking taxpayers’ filings against the data.

The IRS is also operating with 5,000 fewer works as compared to last year. Sixty percent of the staffing reductions came from enforcement jobs. The total IRS workforce fell to 91,380 from 94,346, a 3.1 % drop. With identity-theft related frauds soaring by 431% from 2010 to 2011, the need for enforcement related jobs is increasing.

Many identity-theft tax fraud workers also currently work as telephone assistors to help taxpayers. These workers are also trained to answer taxpayer calls on Mondays during tax-filing season, in hopes of reducing call waiting times.

Another large issue surrounding tax fraud has to do with the Earned Income Tax Credit. This tax credit is designed to help low-and moderate-income working individuals and families keep more of their paychecks. Currently the program is being plagued by improper payments that resulted from fraud and from erroneous claims which are being attributed to taxpayer mistakes. The IRS lacks effective procedures to determine whether applicants are eligible before payments are actually issued, stated George, the Treasury inspector general in his March congressional testimony.

Earned Income Tax Credit fraud resulted in $14 billion to $17 billion of improper payments in 2011.

The IRS was able to block nearly $4 billion in Earned Income Tax Credits in 2010. The IRS is hoping to stop even more with new rules that require tax preparers to register and complete a check sheet showing they made sure clients are eligible for the credit when filing.

Complexities in the Tax Code

Another issue facing the IRS is a complex tax code. “If it’s harder for the taxpayer to fill out their return, it’s harder for use to verify it,” stated Miller.

It isn’t all bad news for the IRS. The IRS has collected more than $4.4 billion from their crackdown on offshore tax evasion. The IRS is also getting two new income information streams that will be used to double-check some taxpayer-filed data.

If you have been contacted by the IRS, or the South Carolina Department of Revenue, contact our IRS audit defense attorney today for a free consultation today.  803.252.4800

 At the request of many of our clients, we have developed a free DUI app for iPhones. This app has several features that may provide assistance to you while you are out on the town or even if you are pulled over and accused of driving under the influence.

Convenient features provided on the app include:

• Calling a cab for you,
• Providing  general advice regarding what to do if you are pulled over,
• Generating a text message to go to a friend or loved one  advising them that you are about to be arrested and allow them to connect with an attorney to ensure your rights are protected,
• Directly connecting you to a lawyer.

With the preventative option of calling a cab before you think about driving home, and a quick way to alert someone in the event that you’re arrested, anyone who may be caught in this type of situation should have this app.

 The DUI app for the iPhone is available on iTunes and Google Play.

Computer users may find themselves without internet over the summer, if they don’t correct the problem soon.

Hackers ran an online advertising scam taking control of infected computers around the world. The FBI caught on to what was happening and set up a safety net before busting the hackers. The system the FBI put in place is only temporary and will be shut down after July 9^th.

The FBI is encouraging those who think their computer may be affected to visit http://www. Dcwg.org. There they can find information about whether their computer may be infected and what can be done to fix the problem.

Most victims do now know their computers have been hacked. Warning signs that you may be victim include slower web surfing and disabled antivirus software. Your computer may also be vulnerable to other problems.

The FBI became aware of the scam and prepared to bring in down last November.

“We started to realize that we might have a little bit of a problem on our hands because…if we just pulled the plug on their criminal infrastructure and threw everybody in jail, the victims of this were going to be without internet service,” stated Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent.  Grasso says if the victim attempted to use the internet, they would be told “page not found” and think problem was due to the internet provider.

On the night of the arrests, the FBI borough in Paul Vixie, chairman and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, to install two Internet servers to take the place of the rogue servers the infected computers had to use. The servers were only intended to be in place until March, but a federal judge in New York extended the deadline until July, citing more time.

The FBI arrested six Estonians in connection with the hacking. The hackers were able to gain $14 million in profits from their scheme involving the use advertisements. The total cost of the hacking on the federal government was $87,000.

The FBI states that as many as 568,000 computers were affected worldwide, with 85,000 of the hacked computers being in the U.S.

Bladder slings are comprised of surgical mesh and are designed to alleviate problems associated with Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP) and Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI).

Transvaginal Mesh Lawsuit

In July 2011, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) issued a warning to physicians and healthcare providers concerning bladder slings and surgical mesh. The FDA stated that complications surrounding surgical mesh and bladder slings are not uncommon, that bladder slings are not as effective as initially believed, and there are in fact safer surgical alternatives.

The FDA has received over 1,000 claims relating to surgical mesh and bladder slings.

Pelvic Organ Prolapse is a condition common in females. Essentially, the urethra, bladder, or other organs slip through an opening in the vaginal wall. Bladder slings comprised of surgical mesh are implanted to alleviate the symptoms. Bladder slings, however, can actually further the condition rather than help relieve it.

Other complications surrounding bladder slings include a painful symptom in which the sling tears from the skin it is attached to. Infections, erosion, painful sexual intercourse, bleeding, and scarring have also been reported by patients who have received a bladder sling. Unfortunately, many times women are forced to undergo additional procedures or even surgery to correct the problem.

If you have experienced complications after receiving a bladder sling, contact the a transvaginal mesh lawyer at the Strom Law Firm, LLC today. We will investigate your claim and fight to obtain the compensation you deserve. The Strom Law Firm was founded by Pete Strom in 1996, and handles cases inSouth Carolina, as well as all over theUnited States. Call us a today for a free, confidential consultation. 803.252.4800.

Transvaginal Mesh Lawyers

In July of 2011 the Food and Drug Administration issued a statement to physicians and health care officials regarding transvaginal mesh. The FDA stated that transvaginal mesh complications were not as rare as previously thought. The FDA also recommended a safer alternative than transvaginal mesh for treating Pelvic Organ Prolapse.

Complications arising from a transvaginal mesh can include, but are not limited to:

• Severe pain;
• Serious infection;
• Bleeding;
• Painful intercourse;
• Vaginal scarring; and
• Erosion of the device.

If you have experienced any of these complications contact a transvaginal mesh lawyer today. After you initially contact a transvaginal mesh lawyer, they will then use their knowledge and experience to see if you have a case and if so, how much compensation you deserve. Even if you feel you do not have a case, it does not hurt to contact a transvaginal mesh lawyer anyways.

The Strom Law Firm, LLC has an experienced and knowledgeable female transvaginal mesh lawyer. She understands the personal nature of your case and will treat it and you with the utmost respect. Contact us today for a free confidential consultation. 888.490.2847.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) Office of Defect Investigation (ODI) and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission have issued a new round of recalls that could affect you.

These recalls include:

-BMW;

-Yokohama Tires;

-GTC Tires;

-Toyota Air Bags;

-Subaru Foresters;

-Hyundai Sonatas;

-Toyota Brake Lights;

-Chrysler Jeeps;

-Chevrolet Expresses, Suburbans, GMC Savanas and Yokuns; and

-Safety 1^st Cabinet Locks