Before becoming LegalReader's Editor-in-Chief, Jay W. Belle Isle worked as a freelance copywriter with clients on four continents. Jay has a degree in Business Administration from Cleary University and a Juris Doctor from Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Jay has also worked as a contracts administrator for a DOD contractor specializing in vehicle armor.
Essure plaintiffs moved to create a MDL in Pennsylvania on July 25. The “[p]laintiffs in all of the actions currently pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (except for Williams et al v. Bayer Corporation, Case No. 4:16-cv-01105)” joined in the motion to create a multi-district litigation regarding Bayer’s “permanent” torture birth control device.
This post was inspired by a real-life hero, Dr. Julio Novoa. In fact, the title comes from a letter he wrote (reproduced in part and linked with his permission) regarding Bayer’s “permanent” birth control device, Essure. For those unfamiliar with Essure, there are numerous posts on this site about the device and the dangers thereof. For those unfamiliar with Dr. Novoa, he is an outspoken physician advocate of removing this dangerous product from the market. His is one of the strongest, loudest voices calling for its removal. He is also one of the most outspoken critics of the FDA’s handling of the issue. Case in point: the Essure black box warning – a roar without any bite.
Takata Corporation confirmed that a Florida suit over Takata air bags settled recently. The suit pertained to Patricia Mincey and her 2001 Honda Civic. Ms. Mincey was involved in an accident in June 2014, during which her Takata air bag deployed with excessive force, leaving her a quadriplegic. Ms. Mincey passed away in April after almost two years in the hospital. She was 77.
Benicar, a popular blood pressure medication manufactured by Daiichi Sankyo and Forest Laboratories, has been the focus of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) for some time now. The Judicial Panel on Multi-district Litigation (JPML) issued the order granting multiple suits MDL status back in early 2015. However, it appears that the first Benicar MDL trials won’t happen until 2017. Daiichi is a Japanese company whose U.S. headquarters are located in Parsippany, NJ. Forest Labs was purchased in 2014 by Actavis.
This post has been percolating in the back of my mind for a while now. It started out as something deeply personal and then, as it continued to percolate, became something I thought applicable at a broader level. What exactly do I mean by Radical Acceptance and Radical Change? Well, I promise if you Google it, you’ll come up with some cool stuff, but none of it matches what’s in my head.
Back on June 3, we started “Feel Good Friday” as a means of showcasing attorneys and thosein the legal profession doing good things in their communities. It was also intended to be a bit of a pressure release, as so much legal news can be hard on the heart to read (and write, sometimes!). One of our first pieces involved the Good News Food Pantry (GNFP), the wonderful work it does in Jennings, Missouri and the fact that it needed some help. Part of that help came in the form of lawyers, members of the Minority Law Caucus (MC) and the New Lawyers Division (NLD) of the American Association for Justice (AAJ). Part came from the generosity of a local Austin law firm and part came from our readers. Here then, is a Good News Food Pantry update for today’s Feel Good Friday.
There is a new $64,000 question in legal circles this summer. It involves a wildly popular form of birth control and an incredibly awful potential side effect. What is that question? Simply put, does Bayer’s Mirena® cause pseudotumor cerebri?
Children of the 90s everywhere are rejoicing in a recently released game called Pokémon GO by Niantic, Inc. The game is for smartphones only and is basically Pokémon meets geo-caching. The object, as I understand it, is to find Pokémon “in the real world” by walking around holding your smartphone out in front of you
Justice was done the Friday before Independence Day in a courtroom in Philadelphia. Janssen, on trial for failure to properly warn of side effects caused by one of its popular antipsychotic drugs, was given no cause to celebrate the long weekend when the jury awarded plaintiff $70M Risperdal verdict.
Sometimes you have to see something in order to believe it. This, for me, was one of those times. I was asked to cover this story and, as I sat pondering the subject matter, thought, “Surely, this can’t be true!” Yet, when I opened the file there it was in all its glory. Uh, that may not have been the best choice of words as you’ll see when we get deeper into this NSFW court transcript on Butt Boys. Come to think of it, that last sentence was probably a poor choice of words, too.