Last week it was reported widely that Johnson & Johnson had “tentatively agreed to a settlement” that could reach up to $4 billion to resolve thousands of lawsuites filed for patients injured by defective DePuy ASR hip implants.  DePuy Orthopaedics is a division of Johnson & Johnson.  Reports by the New York Times, Bloomberg, and others […]

What drives big trial verdicts?  Defense trial lawyer organizations are buying into the theory that if a plaintiff lawyer is able at trial to trigger jurors’ survival instincts, that jury is far more likely to return a big verdict in favor of the plaintiff.  If jurors see the defendant’s conduct as an immediate danger to themselves, their  […]

I’ve been reading reports by various bloggers, Bloomberg News, and the National Law Journal that Johnson & Johnson, DePuy Orthopaedic’s parent company, is considering whether to agree to pay $3 billion to settle more than 10,000 cases filed concering its defective metal-on-metal ASR hip replacement device.  The implication is that the MDL plaintiffs’ steering committee and/or other plaintiff lawyers who […]

Two federal lawsuits charge Novartis Pharmaceuticals with making fraudulent kickbacks to promote sales of its drug, Myofortic.

Less than three years ago, Novartis settled criminal and civil investigations into whether it had illegally promoted …

“He was a very smart man but he died like an idiot,” is the frank and harsh assessment made by Paul Skurka concerning his friend and fellow Holocaust survivor, Roman Blum, who died last year at the age of 97 without a will. Blum had no kn…

This is a story about how the pharmaceutical industry pollutes the safety and efficacy regulatory process by the use of kickbacks and aggressive consumer marketing, including celebrity spokespersons. The story is getting more play because it has …