The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reported that it has received 23 reports of adverse health effects in persons who have used the weight-loss product, Hydroxycut. Reported complications from using Hydroxycut include heart problems and a kind of muscle damage that could lead to kidney failure. One person suffering…
Medtronic, the maker of Sprint Fidelis, a heart defibrillator cable, has taken its product off the market. But the problem with it still being used by some 150,000 people around Illinois and the country has resulted in several deaths in removing the defective cable. Medtronic estimates that the cable has…
In a recent Chicago product defect case, the pace of settlement negotiations were perhaps hastened because in November 2008 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that defendants in negligence suits who settle prior to trial, should not be named on jury verdict forms for the purpose of apportioning liability (Ready v.…
A February 2008 decision by the Supreme Court stands as a barrier to patients who desire to sue for medical device liability. The Supreme Court ruling in Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc. holds that patients or their surviving heirs would be barred from suing makers of complex medical devices like the…
U.S. District Court Judge Virginia M. Kendell denied a Chicago woman’s medical device liability claim that her left knee injuries were caused by her knee replacement device. The complaint was removed to the federal court from Chicago’s Cook County Circuit Court and contained claims of negligence, strict liability and breach…
The Illinois Supreme Court reversed a $27 million jury verdict award and ordered a new trial after applying the risk-utility test of Illinois product design liability in favor of the defendant. This is a new application of the risk-utility test, which typically falls in favor of the plaintiff. Illinois’ strict…
Last week Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit against SFCA, Inc., a distributor of baby cribs, bassinets and playpens, claiming that SFCA continues to sell and distribute the subject bassinet, even after voluntarily recalling 1,000,000 of the products in 2007. The bassinet allegedly has design flaws. Federal regulators…
An Illinois federal judge upheld a jury verdict for a woman permanently disabled in a motorcycle crash even though her expert witness did not pinpoint the exact cause of the crash. McCloud v. Goodyear Dunlop Tires N. America, Ltd. WL 2323792 (C.D. Ill. June 2, 2008). Trish McCloud was severely…
A California Appellate Court supported a trial court’s ruling that the Medical Device Amendments (MDA), Title 21 USC §360k(a), preempts any state law imposing safety requirements on manufacturers of a medical device. So even though the medical device did not pass all of the state’s safety requirements, in Blanco v.…
Consider the following scenario. You work at a Chicago manufacturing factory. One day the machine you operate becomes jammed. In order to try to remove the jammed material you remove the machine’s guard and place your hand inside. But as you do this the machine starts up and crushes your…