By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

The Maryland Daily Record has an article todayah
by Lawyers USA writer Sylvia Hsieh on the expected wave of lawsuits involving Darvocet and Darvon. The gist of the article is that this is the next big thing: "Plaintiffs’ personal injury attorneys are gearing up to initiate an onslaught of litigation against makers of the popular painkillers Darvon and Darvocet."

There is no question there are going to be a lot of lawsuits with very good cases. We are looking at Darvocet/Darvon cases and have a webpage devoted to these claims. But I really do not think this is the next big mass tort. I think there are going to be a small number of good cases and a lot of cases that go nowhere.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

The Maryland Daily Record has an article today by Lawyers USA writer Sylvia Hsieh on the expected wave of lawsuits involving Darvocet and Darvon. The gist of the article is that this is the next big thing: "Plaintiffs’ personal injury attorneys are gearing up to initiate an onslaught of litigation against makers of the popular painkillers Darvon and Darvocet."

There is no question there are going to be a lot of lawsuits with very good cases. We are looking at Darvocet/Darvon cases and have a webpage devoted to these claims. But I really do not think this is the next big mass tort. I think there are going to be a small number of good cases and a lot of cases that go nowhere.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

The U.S. Supreme Court will likely deadlock 4-4 in a seat belt design defect wrongful death lawsuit against where Mazda is arguing that Plaintiff's claim is preempted by federal law. The seat belt at issue is a lap-only seat belt, which I think sounds defective on its face by most of us. Mazda does not make them anymore. Neither does anyone else.

A tie is a win for Mazda because it won the case below. Justice Elena Kagan is sitting this one out because, as Solicitor General, she urged the Supreme Court to consider the case. I'm sure she will consider the facts anew when she gets a crack at this in a different context, but is there any real doubt about how Justice Kagan is going to rule on this?

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

A woman has sued Starbucks for serving “unreasonably hot” tea, causing her second degree burns. Reuters has the article which includes reader comments. All of the commentators are rushing to judgment, claiming either the woman is pond scum (95%) or that Starbucks was "clearly negligent." Adding to the fun, the Plaintiff does not have a European name. So we get bonus racism and xenophobia in addition to the inaccurate conclusions of law. It is a win-win situation for all.

Gun to my head, I suspect this is not a legitimate claim. But who knows? Did Starbucks know or have reason to know that it was serving a liquid that was much hotter than industry standards require?

The immediate rush to judgment (people, didn't Johnnie Cochran teach us anything?) and people's abilities to make breathtaking leaps of logic/faith with absolutely no evidence is always disconcerting.

• Eric Turkewitz provides more commentary

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

The Drug and Device Law Blog has a guest post on the status of the Medical Device Safety Act of 2009, a bill that has been introduced in Congress that would overturn the Supreme Court's holding in Riegel v. Medtronic preempting state common law claims challenging the safety of FDA approved medical devices.

The blog can be summarized as follows: Congress is doing nothing.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

Bayer, the manufacturer of Yasmin and Yaz birth control, is slowly moving in the right direction by strengthening its warning about blood clots. There is no plan to update the warning with respect to gallbladder injuries. Plaintiffs' lawyers in the Yaz/Yasmin lawsuits contend that the progestin contained in the pills, drospirenone, is causing serious health problems in otherwise healthy women, including deep vein thrombosis (blood clots in the deep veins), strokes, heart attacks and gallbladder disease.

The FDA informed Bayer in a letter earlier this month that it is responsible for updating its warning on a key issue in the Yaz lawsuits: whether Yaz causes blood clots. Still, Bayer is not putting a warning on Yaz/Yasmin that is going to clear its duty-to-warn obligation in future blood clots cases (and, again, this warning has no impact on the Yaz gallbladder cases). The new Yaz/Yasmin labels make clear Bayer is not backing all the way down: "The serious side effects of the pill occur very infrequently, especially if you are in good health and are young."

Bayer is in an interesting spot with Yaz/Yasmin. These birth control drugs combined were Bayer's most profitable drug last year. Yaz and Yasmin are also Bayer's biggest seller and the leading birth control pill in North America. I strongly suspect Bayer realizes a strong warning means less prescribing doctors which means less profits. But if Bayer ignores the growing evidence that Yaz and Yasmin are more dangerous than other comparable birth control pills, they are risking lawsuit payouts that exceed the generous profits they now enjoy. Nothing short of a Yaz recall is going to stop the flow of future lawsuits.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

A Maryland District Court has denied a class action on behalf of Maryland residents who own certain model years of Ford Explorers, Mercury Mountaineers and Ford Windstars.

This is not a personal injury lawsuit; plaintiffs' lawyers claimed front seats in the class vehicles are defective because they are prone to collapse rearward in moderate speed rear-impact collisions. In fact, the proposed class action would exclude everyone who has actually suffered an injury.

Plaintiffs' suggested class is individuals who own vehicles that cannot withstand 20,000 inch-pounds of torque without deforming backwards. (Admittedly, I don't fully understand this but let's proceed on pretending that I do.) Judge Benson Everett Legg denied Plaintiffs' request for a class, disagreeing with Plaintiffs' lawyers' assertion that the complexities of twenty-three different seating system configurations can be resolved through a standard as simple as one safety benchmark. The opinion acknowledges that design changes that make a car safer in one accident might make the car less safe in another. In other words, the court's message to the Plaintiffs' lawyers was "it is a little more complicated than that."

Judge Legg also made an interesting point on a collateral estoppel issue that personal injury victims might face in bringing a product liability claim after an accident caused by this alleged defect:

Additionally, around the country, consumers have brought personal injury suits involving the seatback rigidity issue, winning some and losing others. If the instant case were to proceed as a class action and the jury returned a verdict for Ford, a class member who was subsequently injured in a class vehicle would be collaterally estopped from claiming that the vehicle’s seats were defective because they lacked sufficient rigidity. Such a class member, who has relatively relatively little to gain from the instant class action, might be precluded thereafter from prosecuting a substantial personal injury claim.

In other words, if you are in the class and Ford wins the consumer class action lawsuit, you might later be estopped from bringing a product liability claim for your injuries because the issue of whether the product was defective was already litigated between the parties. Very interesting point. Judge Legg leaves open the issue of certifying a more narrowly defined class. But this problem will still exist no matter how narrowly the class is defined.

I get the idea of these types of claim, I really do. Ford is required to make safer vehicles because someone is minding the store when they make a defective product. This improves public safety. Still, I am uneasy with the idea of a class action to fix a defect for everyone but the people that actually get hurt. It sounds like the only ones who really profit in that case are the lawyers. Is this necessarily a bad thing in the big picture? No. But it does not exactly give you a warm and fuzzy feeling either.

You can find the full opinion here.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

The Maryland Court of Appeals found today in a 5-2 opinion in a lead paint case that an individual member of a Maryland limited liability corporation (LLC) can be personally liable for torts personally committed on behalf of the LLC.

The case, Allen v. Dackman, is a classic Baltimore lead paint case, another saga in the tragedy of children suffering brain injuries as the result of ingesting chipping, flaking, and/or peeling lead-based paint.

The owner defendant sought refuge from personal liability because his acts were on behalf of his creatively named LLC, Hard Assets. The trial judge granted summary judgment. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Zarnoch, affirmed:

No member shall be personally liable for the obligations of the limited liability company, whether arising in contract, tort or otherwise, solely by reason of being a member of the limited liability company. Thus, appellants cannot succeed in imputing the alleged negligent acts of Hard Assets to appellee.

The Maryland Court of Appeals disagreed, finding that a person can be held responsible for the torts committed on behalf of the LLC, finding that the lead paint landlord could be personally liable for Plaintiffs' injuries because a reasonable jury could find that he was an “owner” of the property, as the Housing Code defined that term.

I did not find any of this earth shattering because this has always been Maryland law for corporations. However appealing it might be to me personally as a member of an LLC, the logic of giving LLC members additional protection for torts does not make sense to me.

So Plaintiffs get another shot at putting on a case against the landlord individually. This is going to be an interesting case to try to a jury. Children claiming brain damage are almost invariably sympathetic but tenants in this case were not actually paying tenants. So there could be some "how can you sue the guy when he was not even the landlord?" sentiment from the jury (assuming there is no successful motion in limine to exclude that evidence).

The take home lesson here for landlords is that you cannot have property, even vacant or property that is not rented, that has chipping, peeling, or flaking paint. The lesson for doctors, lawyers and every other profession in this case: get insurance.

Brian Brown argued the case for Plaintiffs; James R. Benjamin, Jr. (Whiteford, Taylor, and Preston) argued on behalf of the Defendant.

You can find the full opinion here.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

DePuy Orthopaedics, a division of Johnson & Johnson, is removing its DePuy ASR metal-on-metal hip replacement system that reportedly has a high failure rate. Our lawyers are now investigating these claims around the country.

Experts are questioning why DePuy did not recall the DePuy ASR hip replacement system because it had a design defect that made it difficult to implant the hip replacement device properly. Specifically, orthopedic doctors question whether ASR cups were not designed too shallow. Like Zimmer implants, there is a real question as to whether the lure of profits pushed DePuy to offer a "better product" without properly testing whether the device would be safe and effective.

According to the New York Times, the F.D.A. has received about 300 complaints on the ASR involving patients in the United States who received it since 2008. The vast majority of these 300 patients who received ASR hip implants had to have the device replaced, requiring another difficult operation for patients.

If you believe you may have a potential DePuy hip implant lawsuit, our lawyers are now investigating these claims. Call 800-553-8082 or get a free online consultation.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.