Author Archives: Kurt Niland

Judge moves second DePuy hip bellwether trial to September

Posted: May 10, 2013 Pharmaceutical

A federal judge overseeing multidistrict litigation (MDL) involving all-metal ASR hip implants made by DePuy Orthopedics has moved the second bellwether trial from June to September.

Alabama’s plans to build convention center with BP oil spill recovery funds sparks anger

Posted: May 10, 2013 Environmental

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama is receiving $94 million from BP to restore its share of the Gulf Coast in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the governor plans to spend more than 90 percent of those

DePuy seeks to overturn $8.26 million jury award in first ASR hip trial

Posted: May 9, 2013 Pharmaceutical

Johnson & Johnson and its orthopedics unit DePuy seek to overturn a Los Angeles jury’s decision to award $8.26 million to a plaintiff for injuries he received from a metal-on-metal DePuy ASR hip implant. The companies claim that the jury’s

Bay Area limo fire kills five women and injures four others

Posted: May 9, 2013 Personal Injury

FOSTER CITY, Calif. – A newlywed bride and four other women are dead after the limousine hired to drive them to a hotel in Foster City, Calif., caught on fire as it was crossing the San Mateo Bridge. Investigators are trying

Tests confirm Exxon’s Arkansas oil spill created highly toxic air pollution

Posted: May 8, 2013 Environmental

High levels of 30 toxic chemicals were present in air samples taken in Mayflower, Ark., the day after a breach in ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline allowed an estimated 5,000 barrels of chemically treated tar sands oil to flood a suburban neighborhood.

Most ground turkey products contaminated with fecal bacteria, new study finds

Posted: May 8, 2013 Product Liability

Nearly seventy percent of ground turkey samples tested by Consumer Reports researchers contained enterococcus, harmful bacteria harbored by fecal matter, and 60 percent of the samples also contained Escherichia coli (E. coli), another pathogen associated with the fecal contamination.

Oregon plant where worker fell into meat grinder has history of safety violations

Posted: May 6, 2013 Personal Injury

Federal and Oregon state authorities are investigating the horrific death of a worker who fell into a running blender at a meat processing plant Friday, April 26, near Portland.

BP oil, dispersants sickening and deforming a spectrum of sea life, scientists warn

Posted: May 6, 2013 Environmental

Fish with open, oozing lesions and shrimp and crabs with no eyes, no eye sockets, and horrible deformities are becoming alarmingly common in the Gulf of Mexico, and scientists monitoring the problem worry that all the toxic pollution unleashed by

Belize Supreme Court overturns contracts, sparing barrier reef from offshore drillers

Posted: May 5, 2013 Environmental

Defying government and big-business interests, Belize’s Supreme Court has declared offshore drilling contracts awarded by the Belize government since 2004 to be null and void. The stunning ruling represents a huge victory for the second-largest barrier reef in the world

Is lack of corporate safety amounting to a ‘terror’ all its own?

Posted: May 4, 2013 Personal Injury

If lawmaking proponents of deregulation have their way, Americans won’t have to worry about being harmed by random foreign terrorists so much as they will by the danger and catastrophe presented by many of our own factories, oil rigs, mines,