Personal Injury Breaking News Items

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Weitz & Luxenberg's personal injury attorney firm is a major newsmaker on a national level.

• These articles are about our clients and their success with their personal injury attorney. We can help you the way we have helped them.

• On April 7, 2005 the FDA asked Pfizer, Inc. to withdraw the drug from the market because the overall risk versus benefit profile for the drug is unfavorable. Common risks associated with the drug include angina, heart attack, stroke, fatal skin reactions, and Stevens Johnson syndrome. Pfizer first acknowledged risks associated with Bextra in October of 2004. The American Heart Association soon after was presented with a report indicating patients using Bextra while recovering from heart surgery were 2.19 times more likely to suffer a stroke or heart attack than those taking placebos.

• With the Celebrex contraversy heating up, hear what a celebrex personal injury attorney has to say on the matter.

• With an aging population, see how a nursing home neglect personal injury attorney prepares for the impending increase in these tragic cases.

• Identity Theft is on the rise. Although we don't have a personal injury attorney representing identity theft clients, it is only responsible to do what we can to protect you. We offer this article for your benefit.

As a service to our clients, we at Weitz & Luxenberg offer timely articles of interest. Although these articles may have no direct relationship to your Weitz & Luxenberg lawsuit, we offer these law related articles for your convenience.

Making Meth Harder to Make

• The law specifies that such tablets cannot be sold "for retail sale loose in bottles. Only in blister packets will be allowed. The amendment further states that the products containing pseudoephedrine cannot be offered for retail sale by "self-service," but must be "stored behind a counter or barrier so that it is not accessible by the public, and only accessible by a retail store employee."

Child Restraints and Safety

• A new report just released shows a decline in child restraint usage in 2004. Only 83 percent of drivers last year had or used a child safety seat properly in their car. That's a four percent drop from 2003 and nowhere near our record number of 89 percent in 2002. This decline concerns us a great deal and demands serious reflection. On the positive side, we are still firmly within a record range of high child restraint usage. On the negative side, the usage rate is going the wrong way. We fear we're losing ground we worked so hard to gain, and as a consequence, injuries and deaths may increase.

Phosphorus Pollution in Alabama Lake

• Hall said nutrients such as phosphorus, are released from upstream sources and provide a steady food supply for algal plant life growing in Weiss Lake. When a plant begins to decay, it uses a fish's much needed dissolved oxygen, stressing the fish. Most of the thirty attendees at the Oct. 2 meeting agreed continuous monitoring of conditions in the lake could provide vast stores of information. However, funds for such work are scarce.

Is the new Medicare prescription drug benefit really good for seniors?

• The consensus among Alabama's federal representation concerning the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 is basically this: the law has flaws but is an improvement over what existed previously -- which was nothing. "The legislation does not contain some of the features I would have liked," said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Saks. "But this new law is an excellent start and for the first time ever entitles Alabama seniors a voluntary prescription drug benefit under Medicare that will help many seniors save hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars every year."
   

• After a neighborhood dog came home with a human skull in tow, Georgia police officers began investigating the crematory in Noble, Ga., and what they have uncovered so far is unfathomable. As of Feb. 22, officials from Walker County and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had uncovered the remains of over 280 bodies stashed around the secluded, rural property owned by the Marsh family.
   

• The United States' favorite type of pressure-treated lumber will be phased out of use by 2003, a federal agency announced last week. On Feb. 12, the Environmental Protection Agency said the nation's lumber manufacturers have voluntarily agreed to halt residential use of CCA-treated wood. The announcement was made following the release of a study by The St. Petersburg Times.

• Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore announced April 23 in Montgomery that all jury trials and many criminal cases in the state will suspended for the months of May, July and September. The partial shutdown of the state court system came in the wake of the Alabama Legislature's decision to cut the court's funding by $2.7 million.

• Johnnie Cochran, Jr. (October 2, 1937 – March 29, 2005) was an American attorney best known for his role in the "Dream Team" of legal defense for O. J. Simpson during his highly publicized murder trial. Johnnie Cochran was also known as an attorney in the defense of Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and, with regard to the 1993 allegation of child sexual abuse, of Michael Jackson. He also represented Reginald Oliver Denny, the white trucker beaten by a mob during the 1991 riots that followed the verdict of not guilty in the trial of police officers charged with assaulting Rodney King. An African-American, Johnnie Cochran was a masterful attorney who gained prominence as an early advocate for victims of police abuse before achieving worldwide fame for successfully defending Simpson.

• As Baseball opening day approaches, we at Weitz & Luxenberg know many people have been curious about the ongoing legal investigation into steroids in baseball. Steroids are dangerous drugs that cause serious side effects and ruin lives. But unlike Vioxx or Tysabri, steroids were illegal when used and those professional baseball players using steroids probably usually knew the dangers. We provinde this press release from Senator Joe Biden of Delaware on the baseball & steroids matter for your convenience.

• Weitz & Luxenberg provides this article dealing with the 2005 child molestation trial of Michael Jackson, and the events leading up to it for your convenience. While we are not seeking criminal cases, we do understand that many of our clients and online visitors have an interest in major ongoing trials. We therefore provide this Michael Jackson trial information for you. For information about the cases we accept, click here.

• The Gorilla in the Closet: Dea-BDE, our next environmental nightmare?

• Katrina Friedman of Oakland was alarmed to discover the milk she was feeding her infant was contaminated with a chemical that had been implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders in newborn animals. The revelation came two years ago, following her participation in a study that tested the breast milk of twenty Bay Area mothers for the presence of consumer-product flame-retardants. "The really scary part was that as a group we tested extremely high," Friedman recalls. "My levels were about twenty to forty times higher than [in similar studies done on mothers] in Sweden. That was disturbing."

• Antony Mayo of Oakland says his landlords promised to return his $800 security deposit after he moved out. He lives in subsidized housing, and needed the cash to cover the deposit on his next apartment, but weeks turned to months, and the property owners remained incommunicado. In the end, Mayo never got paid.

• In 1999, three years after the worst epidemic of meningitis in history swept across sub-Saharan Africa and left 25,000 people dead, Dr. Dan Granoff decided it was time to try and combat the disease he'd spent his career studying and developing vaccines against. That very year, in fact, another outbreak of the bacteria that cause meningitis -- a dangerous swelling of the tissue around the brain and spinal cord -- had ravaged the Sudan.

CA Prop 64

• Environmentalists know that the best place to fight corporate greed isn't always city hall, Sacramento, or Washington. Sometimes it's the courtroom. So when California voters stripped them of one of their best legal weapons, the enviros and their attorneys were understandably concerned.

• Austin is dead and gone. He died more than a year ago, but Jennifer Rampton and her husband, David Lunas, still haven't found peace. In their minds, their boy should still be alive, and would be, had his doctor not misdiagnosed what in retrospect seemed like an obvious condition. The recent law school graduates were still students when they first brought their three-year-old beagle mix to Berkeley's University Veterinarian Hospital a couple years back. The two had a theory about why their supposedly neutered dog was humping a stuffed toy dog to the point of making himself bleed: a retained testicle. It certainly would have explained his odd sexual behavior, they figured.

• What a drag it is getting old. Consider the 72-year-old San Leandro resident we'll call "Carlo." A retired former recycler with no health insurance, he must regularly take a cholesterol-lowering drug called Lipitor, which normally costs local residents $94 a month. To cut back on his medical costs, he used to make clandestine trips to Canada where, thanks to government price controls on prescription drugs, many pharmaceuticals are dramatically cheaper than they are in the United States. These days, Carlo doesn't need to go so far from home. For the past few months, he has been ordering his medication through American Drug Club Oakland, the first Bay Area example of a national phenomenon -- storefront operations that help their clients order cheap prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies.

• The battle lines are drawn. In this corner: Wal-Mart, the biggest corporation in the world, backed by the legal stylings of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, one of the world's top-thirty-grossing law firms. In that corner: Berkeley nonprofit law firm the Impact Fund, and a potential pool of 1.6 million irate women. It's going to be one heck of a fight.

• On warm weekends, scores of bicyclists hit the roads that snake into the East Bay Hills and through the Upper San Leandro Reservoir Watershed -- a popular escape that swaps traffic and city noise for the tranquillity of a vast oak forest and stunning reservoir views. But try to stray from the road and you'll find that the East Bay Municipal Utilities District restricts public access to the watershed's wildlands in order to reduce fire danger and keep them as pristine as possible.

• After practicing emergency medicine for thirty years, Chuck Phillips wasn't surprised by much. Blood, guts, trauma, maimings -- whatever wandered into his Fresno emergency room, he was ready. The doctor teaches courses on treating trauma victims and has written the book, literally, on paramedic skills. But in early 1999, as dozens of senior citizens streamed into the ER of the Kaiser Permanente hospital where he worked, Phillips found himself shocked by what was happening.

• One afternoon last June, Oakland wheelchair user Oliver Freed got on AC Transit's 43 line in Berkeley and took his place in the disabled seating area. Freed was careful to thank the driver for letting him board. That way, if [it]... hit the fan later, no one could accuse him of being a troublemaker. After all, he knew something the driver didn't know -- that their entire interaction was being secretly recorded on videotape.

• Oakland's ugliest attributes have a way of infecting other cities. Take, for example, the events of June 4, 1995. On that night, in what has been described as San Francisco's worst police violence scandal in decades, twelve officers beat, kicked, and pepper-sprayed a man named Aaron Williams, who died in custody thirty minutes later. More than a dozen witnesses described a scene of appalling brutality, in which cops repeatedly kicked a handcuffed Williams as he lay in a pool of blood. Medical Examiner Boyd Stephens later determined that a bruise on Williams' cheek matched a shoe worn by one of the officers present, Marc Andaya. Stephens concluded that Andaya, who was to become the public face of police misconduct for the next two years, may have kicked Williams so hard that he left the imprint of his boot's tread on the man's face.

• CEDAR BLUFF - Mayor Bob Davis sat down behind his desk for a few minutes Thursday afternoon to address some of the questions and comments he has been receiving since the town's successful drive to obtain the right to hold a wet-dry referendum from the state Legislature. The vote is scheduled for Aug. 12 at the Cedar Bluff Community Center, on old Highway 9 in downtown.

• At least one lawyer who has read the latest allocation agreement between Alabama and Georgia believes it's so legally unsound that it could even be deemed a written attempt to usurp the United States Constitution.

• After fighting for years for permission to use the democratic process to allow residents a voice in the town's future, Cedar Bluff Mayor Bob Davis and the Town Council may now have to sit by as a judge decides it instead.

• The most recent newsletter released by the environmental watchdog group Coosa River Basin Initiative says negotiators in the tri-state water wars have succeeded in making needed improvements in the wording of the compacts. However, the letter also claims the agreement has a long way to go before it can become an "ecologically sound and hydrologically acceptable" document.

• Former Cherokee County Probate Judge Phillip Jordan will plead guilty to extortion in a far-reaching bribery case that remains under investigation, federal prosecutors announced Thursday morning.

• Cherokee County Sheriff Larry Wilson announced during a Friday afternoon press conference that James Allen Waddell, 20, of 2990 Cherokee County 51 in Cedar Bluff, has been arrested and charged with firing the shots that hit a school bus on Alabama Highway 9 Tuesday afternoon.

• Most deaths due to sudden cardiac arrest occur with little or no warning. The common reason for a cardiac arrest is caused by a disturbance in the heart rhythm called ventricular fibrillation which cuts off blood supply to the brain and other vital organs. This accounts for over 2,000 American deaths everyday. However, there is a way to prevent death from heart attacks: defibrillation.

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see also:

Child Restraint Usage and Safety A new report just released shows a decline in child restraint usage in 2004
Only 83 percent of drivers last year had or used a child safety seat properly in their car

Jackson Trial Get information on Michael Jackson, including his molestation trial
Michael Jackson doc tells all about events leading to the the trial

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