Monthly Archives: July 2014

Dangers of Cell Phone Distraction While Driving

Auto Accidents

“Would you drive the length of a football field at 55 mph with your eyes closed?
That question was posed by TimesDaily.com. According to the online publication, the National Highway Safety Administration states that is what it is like to take your eyes off the road for five seconds.

Hand-Held Versus Hands-Free

Cell phone technology is expanding at a rapid rate. Android and Apple smart-phones have the capability to surf Facebook, the internet, read emails, stream news, watch movies and videos, and take pictures at the touch of a finger. The technology is expected to expand to screens that bend, self-charging phones, and NFC chips that allow people to use their phones as boarding passes, hotel room keys, and payment cards.

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$11 Million Pelvic Mesh Jury Verdict again Ethicon Upheld

Transvaginal Mesh

New Jersey trial Judge Carol Higbee denied Johnson & Johnson and subsidiary Ethicon’s motion to throw out the 11 million dollar jury verdict from last February’s trial. The jury in the Linda Gross v. Ethicon trial awarded $3.35 million in compensatory damages and $7.76 in punitive damages after finding that the manufacturer of the transvaginal mesh was negligent and that the product was a defective product under products liability laws.

The jury trial which took four weeks involved the Gynecare Prolift Pelvic Mesh Kit. This type of mesh is marketed to treat pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence in women. In 2012, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) became concerned the high rate of injuries and adverse outcomes from transvaginal mesh products and issued a number orders that medical device manufacturers increase post market surveillance of adverse events for these products.

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DePuy ASR Hip Settlement Update in the U.S.A.

Defective Medical Devices

The first few settlement payments were made over the last two weeks from the DePuy ASR Settlement Trust. It had been hoped that more payments would have been made by this point. Brown Greer which is the law firm that is administering the settlement listed June on its website as the anticipated starting month for payments. Apparently, reviewing the claims and documents submitted turned out to be more time consuming than they had anticipated.

As of the second week of July, Brown Greer has doubled its team members on this project so that they now have 85 attorneys, project managers, analysis, and claim reviewers. Brown Greer has a good track record, in my experience, in administering large complex settlements such as this one and I am confident that they will be able to speed up the processing and payment of these claims.

Brown Greer reviews the claims submitted and then issues either a Notice of Eligibility or a Deficiency Notice if documents submitted are not complete. If an Eligibility Notice is issued, it provides a detailed breakdown of how much is proposed to be paid on the claim and why. The attorney receiving the Notice of Eligibility can either accept the claim or contest the claim. If the attorney receiving the Notice of Eligibility does not agree that the payment amount is correct he or she can submit a written description of why the claim is not correct and can upload documents to support the contest of the claim.

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