WASHINGTON -Safety and Medical experts say highway safety could be vastly improved if black boxes that record information about car crashes were standardized. An immediate benefit, they say, would be fewer deaths. Advocates of the standard say objections from the automobile industry are thwarting efforts to set a standard. The companies say they are defending […]

Manufactures and retailers of Ephedra supplements have begun to scale back or abandon sales of products containing the herb, because of the rising costs of liability insurance and the threat of a possible government crackdown on Ephedra. The moves follow several months of bad publicity.
Growing concerns over the safety of Ephedra prompted, In June, the […]

According to internal company memos unsealed in a whistle-blower case, top executives at Warner-Lambert, a drug company that has since been acquired by Pfizer, approved a detailed plan to market Neurontin, an epilepsy medicine, for unapproved uses. At issue in the case is tens of millions of dollars that taxpayers paid for Neurontin when doctors […]

U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner certified a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 10,000 Pennsylvania owners of the Sephia model of Kia cars manufactured from 1997 to 2001. The suit alleges that Sephias suffer from widespread problems in the braking systems that cause premature wear, vibration and increased stopping distance. Joyner’s […]

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Warren Ettinger reduced the largest punitive damages award ever granted in an individual smoking case, from $28 billion to $28 million. Judge Ettinger ruled the original award was excessive because it was 33,000 times greater than the $850,000 in compensatory damages in the case. The ruling reducing the award was […]

HCA, the nation’s largest hospital company, has agreed in principle with the Justice Department to pay more than $800 million to settle accusations of health care fraud, according to people involved in the case. Under the terms, HCA would pay $630 million in fines and penalties to resolve all outstanding civil litigation with the Justice […]

PITTSBURGH — Halliburton, a pipeline services company, announced Wednesday that it has agreed to pay about $4 billion in cash and stock to settle about 300,000 current and future asbestos cases nationwide. The Huston-based industrial giant once led by Vice President Dick Cheney inherited the asbestos liabilities when it bought Dresser Industries in 1998.
Asbestos […]

JACKSON, Miss. — Dupont Co., Eastman Chemical Co. and other plastics manufactures are targets of new asbestos suits that claim makers of plastic industrial products containing asbestos are also to blame for workers health problems. The recent suits claim that such plastics, after becoming worn from use, may release health-threatening asbestos dust.
Many of the […]

Toxic mold a costly hazard for homeowners is not becoming a legal and health problem for employers too. Employees are filling lawsuits about health problems they say were caused by toxic mold. About 9,000 lawsuits involving toxic mold have been filed in the USA and Canada in the past 10 years, according to National Underwriter […]

A person who is inoculated with the Smallpox vaccination can unintentionally transmit the virus in the vaccine, to others, in effect involuntarily vaccinating them and putting some at risk of life-threatening complications. It is generally recommended for people who have recently been vaccinated to stay out of close contact with others or cover the vaccine […]