Lawyers representing plaintiffs who allegedly suffered a Levaquin tendon rupture sought the mass-tort treatment and recommended that the cases be transferred to Atlantic County. Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, Inc., a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson which manufactured the drug, supported the mass-tort treatment but requested that the cases be assigned to Middlesex County, where their headquarters are located.

The cases have been assigned to Judge Carol Higbee in the Atlantic County Superior Cout, who has experience handling previous mass-tort cases, including thousands of Vioxx lawsuits against Merck.

All of the Levaquin lawsuits contain similar allegations, that the drug maker failed to adequately research the tendon problems associated with the antibiotic or warn users about the increased risk of tendon ruptures, often involving the Achilles tendon.

Mass tort designation was granted because the court agreed that the litigation will likely expand into thousands of cases with the same defendants and similar issues of fact, injury and damages.

Levaquin (levofloxacin) was approved by the FDA as an antibiotic in 1996, and it is available as an oral tablet, oral solution or as an injection. In July 2008, the FDA required a black box warning to be placed on the medication indicating that Levaquin side effects increase the risk of tendon ruptures and tendonitis. The warning came more than two years after the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen filed a petition with the FDA requesting that those warnings be added.

All federal lawsuits over Levaquin have already been consolidated into a multidistrict litigation, or MDL, for pretrial litigation in the District of Minnesota. It is likely that Judge Higbee and District Judge John R. Tunheim, who is assigned to the federal MDL, will coordinate discovery and other pretrial proceedings to avoid duplicative discovery and inconsistent rulings. The first Levaquin trial in the MDL is currently scheduled to begin in August 2010.

The infant baby float recall was issued by Aqua-Leisure Industries of Avon, Mass. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) posted notice of the recall on July 2, warning that there have been at least 31 reports of the leg straps breaking, plunging children unexpectedly into the water. Fortunately, no injuries have been reported.

All of the recalled baby floats have a date between 08/02 and 07/08 molded onto the valves. The floats were sold since December 2002 for between $8 and $15 at retailers nationwide, including Toys “R” Us, Wal-Mart, Dollar General, Kmart, Walgreens, Ace Hardware, and Bed, Bath & Beyond.

The floats came in a variety of colors and styles, including:

Baby & Me Combo: a yellow figure-8-shaped float with a turquoise vinyl seat bucket and seat back, and a plastic ring and bar toy in the middle.

Deluxe Baby Boat: a yellow boat-shaped float with turquoise plastic handles and a turquoise vinyl seat bucket and seat back.

Deluxe Toddler Racer: a yellow boat-shaped float with turquoise plastic handles, steering wheel, vinyl seat bucket and yellow seat back.

Cozy Crab Sunshade Float/Crabby Baby Boat: A red crab-shaped float with vinyl seat bucket and a yellow, inflatable, adjustable sunshade.

Ticklish Turtle Sunshade Float/Baby Boat: A yellow and green turtle-shaped float with a vinyl seat bucket and inflatable, adjustable sunshade.

Toddler Race Boat: A yellow boat-shaped float painted to look like an automobile with green plastic handles, steering wheel and a vinyl seat bucket.

Aquarium Baby Float: A yellow and purple aquarium-themed, ring-shaped float with purple vinyl seat bucket and seat back.

Baby Adjustable Sunshade Boat: Blue and white float with a beach and crab theme, white plastic handle, blue seat bucket and inflatable, adjustable blue and white sunshade.

Sunshade Wave Rider Float: White float with aquatic theme and red seat back and blue and white inflatable canopy, blue seat bucket and red handle bars.

Sunshade Buggy: Blue and green, or pink and yellow, car-shaped float with dune-buggy theme and yellow steering wheel.

Kiddie Cabin Cruiser: Light blue, purple and clear float with light blue cabin-shaped inflatable canopy, light blue vinyl seat bucket and back.

Sing-Along Wave Rider: White float with red seat back, handlebars and red and white inflatable canopy that plays “Twinkle Twinkle” and “Row Row Row Your Boat.”

Quacker Float: Yellow duck-shaped float with squeezable noisemaker.

Squirtin’ Tootin’ Tugboat: White and red boat-shaped float with black and red “smokestack,” and a squirt gun and squeezable noisemaker.

The CPSC is recommending consumers stop using these floats immediately, and contact Aqua-Leisure for a full refund. Product liability lawyers recommend that anyone whose child has been injured by a defective Aqua-Leisure float should preserve the float for further testing if they intend to pursue a personal injury lawsuit.

Infant baby floats that contain the lettering “NP” on the valve are not affected by the recall.

On Tuesday, Baltimore County firefighters set up a command center at the complex, as workers began removing the gas stoves suspected of causing the problems with carbon monoxide poisoning. The stoves were reportedly emitting high amounts of carbon monoxide, which forms when natural gas does not completely burn or when appliances are not properly ventilated.

Carbon monoxide poisoning is a potentially life threatening condition that can result in long-term health problems. The odorless, colorless gas can cause nausea and lightheadedness. It deprives the brain of oxygen, which can result permanent brain damage or death.

In the months following the 2005 death of a father and his two teenage step-daughters at the townhouse community, at least nine other residents were hospitalized with symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. The problems resurfaced last week, when three women and two children, ages 11 and 18-months, were hospitalized and treated in a hyperbaric chamber.

All Maryland public housing units built since 2008 are required to have carbon monoxide alarms installed. However, Cove Village was built in the 1970s and there are no laws requiring older public housing units to have the alarms installed.

Cove Village had carbon monoxide alarms since the 2005 fatalities; however until the latest incidents the source of the carbon monoxide had not been discovered. Cove Village officials indicate that they expect the replacement of the stoves to resolve the problems. The complex has the highest number of incidents of carbon monoxide poisoning in Maryland.

Baltimore County firefighters responded to 20 carbon monoxide alarms from the townhouse community in the span of just one month last year. However, county officials said there was nothing they could do to fine the complex, as it implemented fixes whenever problems flared up, and the county could find no code violation problems in connection to the incidents.

More than 400,000 Simplicity drop side cribs are involved in this latest recall. The crib sides can break loose, allowing infants to become trapped between the crib and the drop side. This could result in suffocation or strangulation.

An eight-month-old child from Houston, Texas died after a plastic connector on the drop side broke. At least 25 other incidents have been reported involving the drop side detaching from the crib for various reasons, such as the plastic flexible tabs, connectors or tracks breaking or becoming deformed. In at least two situations children were rescued after being found trapped between the drop side and the mattress.

The recall is the latest in a number of drop side crib recalls that have been issued on behalf of Simplicity as well as other crib manufacturers. Some retailers have decided to stop carrying the unsafe crib design, and several major crib manufacturers agreed in March to support a proposed drop-side crib ban.

Simplicity, Inc. went out of business in 2007 after recalling about one million cribs with an older drop-side design. Since they ceased operations, additional recalls have been issued for cribs and bassinets manufactured by the company.

According to the CPSC announcement, the newest Simplicity crib recall affects all drop side cribs with a different or “newer” style plastic hardware than the previously recalled cribs. These cribs can be identified by a flexible plastic tab at the top of the lower tracks. Model numbers affected by the recall include, but may not be limited to: 8050, 8325, 8620, 8745, 8748, 8755, 8756, 8765, 8778, 8810, 8994, 8995, and 8996.

The U.S. CPSC recommends that the cribs should be taken out of use immediately, and other safe sleep arrangements be made for infants. The U.S. CPSC also notes that the cribs can be returned to retailers for a full refund and replacement.

The complaint was filed on June 29 in D.C. Superior Court, by the family of one of the passengers who died in the subway accident, 29-year-old Veronica DuBose. The family is seeking $25 million in damages for the death of DuBose, who was the mother of a 7-year-old and 20-month-old.

The DC Metro crash occurred on June 22, 2009, when a train on the subway’s Red Line slammed in to the back of another train shortly after 5 p.m., just outside of the Fort Totten Station. The rear train was travelling fast enough that the front car was propelled into the air and crashed onto the back of the front train. Many people were ejected from the rear train upon impact.

Investigators have said that it appears the rear train’s operator, Jeanice McMillan, tried using the emergency brake to prevent the crash. The train was under computer control at the time of the accident.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators and transit officials are still looking into causes of the crash. On Wednesday, officials announced that a device replaced five days before the crash was found to be faulty. The device was part of the Red Line’s crash avoidance system. Officials say that a circuit in the crash area began intermittently losing its ability to detect trains after the device was replaced, but the problem was not uncovered until after the accident.

The device is called a Wee-Z bond, and helps maintain a safe distance between trains. It would occasionally lose its ability to detect trains, but officials say the malfunctions happened so quickly and briefly that controllers would not have detected it in the Metro operations center.

Neither NTSB investigators nor officials from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) will say whether the malfunction was the cause of the crash. The entire system is now being checked to see if there are similar malfunctions elsewhere.

The DC Metro crash lawsuit includes as defendants both WMATA and Alstom Signaling, Inc. which was involved in the computer control systems for the trains.

In an early communication released by the FDA yesterday, they notified healthcare providers that they are aware of four studies published in the medical journal Diabetologia, which suggested that more in-depth studies need to be done about the potential Lantus cancer risk.

Lantus (insulin glargine) is a once-a-day injection that slowly releases insulin into the blood over time. Manufactured by Sanofi-Aventis, it has the second largest share of the diabetic drug treatment market and brought in $3.45 billion in worldwide sales last year. The drug was approved by FDA for diabetes treatment in 2000.

The studies referenced by the FDA involved analysis of German and Swedish insurance databases, looking at the incidence of cancer among diabetics using Lantus insulin. The study data suggested that low doses of Lantus may increase the risk of cancer 9% and high doses may increase the risk 31%. However, similar databases in Scotland and the U.K. showed no significant cancer risk increases, and the editors of the journal and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes cautioned that the results are inconclusive.

“The duration of patient follow-up in all four studies was shorter than what is generally considered necessary to evaluate for cancer risk from drug exposure,” said the FDA in a statement issued July 1, 2009. “Further, inconsistencies in findings within and across individual studies raise concerns as to whether an association between the use of insulin glargine and cancer truly exists. Additionally, differences in patient characteristics across the treatment groups may have contributed to a finding of increased cancer risk.”

The FDA indicates that they are reviewing a number of sources for Lantus safety data, including the recent studies and clinical studies, and is also currently working with Sanofi-Aventis to determine whether there need to be additional studies.

Patients have been urged by the FDA to not stop their insulin therapy without consulting a physician. Uncontrolled blood sugar levels can have both immediate and long-term serious adverse effects, and patients are advised to cntact their doctors if they have concerns about the medicines they are taking.

At least 72 people in 30 states have reportedly been identified as part of the E. coli food poisoning outbreak associated with eating raw, refrigerated Toll House cookie dough sold by Nestle USA. The CDC has confirmed that at least 51 of those cases involve people who have the same strain of E. coli O157:H7 bacteria linked to the cookie dough.

The cookie dough food poisoning outbreak has caused 34 people to be hospitalized and 10 have been diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) which is a type of kidney disease. Most of the victims have been females under the age of 19, but people impacted range between 2 years old and 65 years old.

The CDC also reports that at least 23 people in nine states have reportedly become ill from beef E. coli food poisoning linked to recalls issued by JBS Swift Beef Co. over the past two weeks, involving more than 420,000 pounds of assorted beef products. At least 12 of the people involved in that E. coli outbreak have been hospitalized and two have suffered from HUS.

The E. coli O157:H7 bacteria can cause serious food poisoning symptoms like bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps, and in some cases can be fatal. While most people typically recover in about a week, more severe cases can lead to hospitalization or HUS.

Children under the age of five, the elderly and those with a weak immune system are typically the most susceptible to severe E. coli infections. In the case of both outbreaks, federal agencies have as yet been unable to determine the source of the E. coli contamination.

The Nestle cookie dough recall encompasses all prepackaged and refrigerated uncooked Toll House cookie dough. Even though most of the reported illnesses involved eating the cookie dough raw, the CDC still warns against trying to cook it, as the bacteria could spread during preparation.

The recalled beef was shipped in boxes that bear the establishment number “EST. 969” inside the USDA mark of inspection, with an identifying package date of “042109” or “042209” and a time stamp of “0618” to “1130.” However, in many cases the meat may have been reprocesses into ground beef or other forms and may no longer carry the establishment number. The beef products include a variety of bottom sirloin cuts, intact cuts of beef and a variety of other products.

There have been at least two cookie dough food poisoning lawsuits filed in connection to the cookie dough outbreak, both on behalf of young teen or preteen girls who were hospitalized due to cookie dough food poisoning. No known beef recall lawsuits have yet been filed against JBS Swift Beef.

Chantix (varenicline), which is manufactured and sold by Pfizer, was approved by the FDA in 2006 and was quickly recognized as a potential blockbuster. It works by blocking the receptors in the brain that are commonly stimulated by nicotine, reducing the positive feelings that come from cigarettes. However, hundreds of users have reported severe psychological side effects, such as depression, sudden aggressive behavior and suicide from Chantix.

After initiating a review of the Chantix suicide problems in November 2007, the FDA announced on Wednesday that the most stringent warning allowed under federal regulations will be placed on the medication. A boxed warning will notify consumers that the smoking cessation drug may increase the risk of changes in behavior, depression, hostility and suicidal thoughts.

The same warning was also required for bupropion-based medications, including another smoking cessation drug Zyban, the antidepressant Wellbutrin, as well as bupropion generics, many of which carry suicide warnings already.

Although Chantix already contains information on their label about reports of suicide, unusual behavior and other psychological side effects, the new warning will contain far more direct language and will be displayed prominently on the label in a black box.

In addition to the warning, the manufacturers of these drugs are required to conduct clinical trials to provide more data on how often the neuropsychiatric symptoms occur and under what conditions. They will also have to add more information in the medication guide that discusses the risks of the potential behavioral and mental changes, so that patients are aware to immediately contact their doctor if they notice any behavioral changes.

A number of Chantix lawsuits have been filed against Pfizer alleging that the drug maker failed to properly research their medication or adequately warn about the potential suicide risk with Chantix. During clinical trials before the approval of Chantix, individuals with a psychiatric history or current psychiatric symptoms were excluded from the study, even though many people with depression or other forms of psychiatric illness are smokers who used the drug to help themselves quit.

The new warnings will ensure that potential users are aware of the problems that may be caused by using the medication to help them quit smoking. The FDA notes that people should seriously weigh the potential risk of suicide with Chantix and Zyban before deciding to use either of the drugs.

“The risk of serious adverse events while taking these products must be weighed against the significant health benefits of quitting smoking,” said Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States and we know these products are effective aids in helping people quit.”

The study, conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was published June 30 in The Journal of the American Medical Association, and found that Infuse and other products that use a bioengineered bone growth protein called BMP appear to result in a higher incidence of neck surgery problems when they are used during cervical spinal fusion procedures to correct neck pains.

The study looked at both Infuse, and a Stryker product called OP-1 Putty, which is used in a very limited number of patients where other spinal fusion methods are not an option.

The bone growth proteins were first approved in 2002 for use during lower back fusions. However, some doctors also use the bone graft to treat upper spinal pain, which the study data indicates can lead to an increased risk of complications. In 2006, the two products were used in 25 percent of all spinal fusion surgeries, with Infuse accounting for most of the BMP use.

Use of BMP has become popular because it allows bone to heal faster after surgery. It also tends to require less repeat surgeries, and doctors do not have to harvest the bone from other parts of the body, such as the hip.

The study found that patients who received bioengineered proteins in upper spinal fusion procedures suffered a complication rate of 7 percent; 50 percent higher than those who did not. When used on lower spinal, or lumbar, fusion procedures, there was no increase in complications, however.

Researchers say the rate of complication is probably higher, because the study only looked at patients who suffered complications while still in the hospital recovering from surgery. Many patients likely had complications after they left the hospital that went unreported.

The FDA issued an alert last year advising doctors not use infuse in upper spinal fusion procedures after receiving 38 reports of potentially fatal complications that included swelling of the neck and breathing difficulties. An FDA advisory panel recommended the FDA not approve OP-1 Putty for wider use in late March.

A number of Medtronic Infuse lawsuits have ben filed on behalf of individuals who experienced problems with breathing and swallowing that developed days or weeks following their neck surgery. This can lead to an emergency tracheotomy or death.

In November 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice initiated an investigation into the actions of Medtronic, Inc., and whether they actively promoted and marketed the Infuse bone graft for use in the cervical spine. While doctors are allowed to use FDA approved medical devices for non-approved purposes, the manufacturer is not allowed to promote or encourage such uses that they have not established as safe and effective.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, investigated the side effects of Ambien on mice who had their whiskers trimmed. Mice whose brain receptors had changed to deal with the loss of whiskers were found to suddenly become susceptible to Ambien sleep walking and other activities.

Researchers from Georgetown University Medical Hospital indicate that it is possible some users of the insomnia drug, whose brain receptors are different for some reason, may be responding to Ambien the same way, leading to the complex activities while they are asleep.

Ambien (zolpidem) is a sedative manufactured by Sanof-Aventis, which is one of the best selling medications in the United States. It is heavily marketed through direct to consumer advertisements to help people fall asleep and stay asleep with an extended release version.

A number of users of the drug have suffered catastrophic or fatal injuries as a result of Ambien sleep walking, attempting to drive a car or prepare food. While the user is half asleep and half awake, they may do things that they would not do if they were awake or attempt to do things they are not alert enough to do.

Reported injuries have occurred as a result of car accidents, falls, cooking injuries like fires and even people eating raw meat. However, hard scientific evidence explaining the phenomenon has been difficult to produce.

The new study suggests that Ambien may shut down brain circuits that inhibit other parts of the brain from working while asleep. Without those inhibitors, brain circuits that would normally be dormant become active. However, researchers say the experiments showed that it’s likely only to happen to people who have had their brain receptors changed in some way. This could occur in a variety of ways, such as by stress or alcohol use.

Researchers cautioned that more research into the Ambien sleep activities is necessary before any definitive conclusions can be made.