Tag: Boston Scientific

Week Adjourned: 7.10.15 – Ford, Capital One, Transvaginal Mesh

Ford ExplorerTop Class Action Lawsuits 

Ford is not in the driver’s seat on this one…They got hit with a defective design class action this week, alleging certain Ford Explorer, Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX models allow carbon monoxide to enter the passenger compartment. Yeah, not so good guys. The suit covers 2011-2015 Ford Explorers as well as Edge and MKX models from 2011-2013 with 3.5L and 3.7L TIVCT engines.

The proposed Ford class action was filed on behalf of New Jersey owners or lessors of the vehicles in question. The complaint also proposes a subclass of consumers with claims under New Jersey’s Lemon Law for claimants who reported the defect to Ford in the first two years or 24 months of ownership.

According to the legal documents, Ford has known of the defect since 2012 but has not warned owners to get it fixed. Surprised? Apparently Ford has issued two technical safety bulletins to dealers about the problem but to date, has not notified owners, despite the related safety hazard. Ford has attempted to fix the problem on customers’ vehicles with a variety of remedies but none have proved effective, according to the complaint.

“Given that the defect renders driving the subject vehicles a health hazard that is potentially deadly, the vehicles are valueless,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit alleges breach of implied and express warranty, violation of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act, of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, and of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Warrant Act, also known as the Lemon Law. Love that Lemon Law!!!

Capital One should change its tag line…from “What’s in your Wallet” to “If at first you don’t succeed.” These guys are frankly, incorrigible—nay—unrepentant. They are facing yet another robocalls class action lawsuit—this one against Capital One Financial Group. Filed by plaintiff Nakia Pitr, this latest lawsuit alleges Capital One is in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by calling consumers through robodialing without their consent. Yeah, know this one off by heart.

Pitre claims in the Capital One lawsuit that within the space of two months, she received 37 calls on her cellphone from the bank, despite not being a customer. Capital One ignored her requests to stop calling, she claims.

According to the lawsuit, the calls were from the company’s credit card division. During each of the calls she received and answered, she told the bank they had the wrong number and asked them to stop calling. However, she continued to receive calls. According to the suit, the frequency and nature of the calls indicates they were made from an automatic telephone dialing system.

Pitre further alleges she has never been a Capital One customer, has never given the bank her number or given her consent for them to call her.

If approved, the class would include anyone contacted by Capital One using a robodialing system from July 1, 2014, through July 2, 2015, without prior consent and who received calls after asking not to be contacted.

FYI—the case is Pitre v. Capital One Financial Corporation, case number 1:15-cv-00869, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Top Settlements

Not a class action settlement—but a significant settlement none the less. Sadly, at great personal expense. Boston Scientific has been ordered to pay a $100 million settlement by a jury hearing the case of a women who suffered injury from the company’s Pinnacle and Advantage Fit vaginal mesh. Fifty-one year old Deborah Barba was awarded $25 million in compensatory damages with an additional $75 million in punitive damages.

In her personal injury lawsuit, Barba alleged she received a Boston Scientific’s Pinnacle mesh product in 2009 for pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and stress urinary incontinence (SUI). However, following the implant she began experiencing serious medical complications and despite two subsequent surgeries to rectify the problems, parts of the vaginal mesh implant remain in her body and continue to cause her pain.

The trial took just two weeks, after which the jury reached a decision within seven hours. They found Boston Scientific was negligent in designing and making the devices and that it had failed to warn patients and doctors about potential risks.

To date, this verdict is the largest regarding litigation over transvaginal mesh devices against Boston Scientific or any other mesh manufacturer. The company announced last month it had reached agreements to pay about $119 million to resolve 2,970 cases about transvaginal mesh. There are more than 25,000 defective product lawsuits pending against Boston Scientific concerning injuries resulting resulting from the Pinnacle mesh implant.

Reuters reports that this latest verdict is the sixth so far against the company by women who say that the devices are poorly designed and use subpar materials, resulting in painful physical injuries such as bleeding, infection and pain during sex.

That’s a wrap folks…See you at the Bar!

 

 

Week Adjourned: 11.21.14 – Chrysler, Sephora, Boston Scientific

The top class action lawsuits and settlements for the week. Top stories include Chrysler, Sephora and Boston Scientific Mesh.

Chrysler LogoTop Class Action Lawsuits

Tipsy TIPMs? Topping the list this week? Another defective automotive class action lawsuit—surprise, surprise. Never would have guessed, right?

This one was filed in federal court against Chrysler Group LLC. The lawsuit seeks to hold the Big Three automobile maker accountable for economic losses suffered by owners and passengers of Chrysler cars and trucks that stalled, caught fire or sustained other potentially life-endangering malfunctions due to a faulty onboard computer.

The Chrysler lawsuit alleges that Chrysler knew about and fraudulently concealed the defectiveness of its Totally Integrated Power Module—TIPM, for short. Chrysler sought as far back as 2005 to hide the magnitude of the TIPM defect from consumers and initiated only limited vehicle recalls, the complaint alleges.

Despite knowing about the defect, Chrysler continued installing faulty TIPMs in vehicles until the 2014 model year, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The TIPM is an integral component of many Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep models on the road today, the device controls and distributes power to all of a vehicle’s electrical functions. Prone to sudden failure, a vehicle’s TIPM poses a serious safety issue, placing the driver and passengers at risk of harm, the complaint indicates.

A failed TIPM causes malfunctioning of airbags, headlights, brakes, horns, wipers, windows, door locks and other components that rely on electrical functions.Worse, a failed TIPM can cause a vehicle’s engine to shut down unexpectedly while driving at high speeds.

“Millions of consumers who have bought into this brand have suffered harm because of Chrysler and its faulty Totally Integrated Power Module,” the complaint alleges.

Owners of defective TIPM-equipped Chrysler vehicles suffer economic losses in part because the device is expensive to replace, costing upward of $1,000. Also, because of the sheer number of vehicles requiring a new TIPM, consumers are forced to make do without their vehicles for many days and even weeks while their vehicles sit in the shop and wait for a replacement TIPM to be shipped. Adding insult to injury, the defect caused many motorists to incur unnecessary costs to replace non-defective parts that malfunctioned because of the faulty TIPM. 

Ugly Side of Beauty Biz? Sephora USA Inc. is facing a proposed discrimination class action lawsuit. Filed in New York federal court, the discrimination lawsuit claims the company deactivated thousands of Asian customers’ accounts, allegedly motivated by a racist belief that they were buying discounted beauty products in bulk and reselling them for profit.

Brought by four women of Chinese descent, the discrimination class action claims Sephora shut down Asian users’ accounts after its site crashed on November 6, due to a surge in web traffic resulting from a 20 percent-off sale promotion. According to Sephora, reselling of its products is pervasive. The company said it blocked some North American and international customer accounts for this reason.

According to the plaintiffs, the only accounts that were deactivated were those that used Chinese web domains or had names that Sephora perceived as being of Asian origin. A plaintiffs’ attorney said an investigation revealed that only users who fell into those two categories had their accounts blocked.

According to the lawsuit, the four named plaintiffs live in New York, Philadelphia, and Columbus, Ohio, and were all members of Sephora’s ‘Beauty Insider’ program. The program gives customers who spend certain amounts on the company’s products access to discounts and other promotions. The points the women accumulated by buying Sephora products, and which give access to additional discounts and special gifts, have been lost, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Sephora alleges it only went ahead with the deactivations after it “identified certain entities who take advantage of promotional opportunities to purchase products in large volume on our website and resell them through other channels.”

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said that instead of deactivating accounts, Sephora could have addressed the resale issue by limiting the number of products a single customer could purchase or capping the amount of money they could spend. Sounds sensible.

The named plaintiffs seek to represent a class of Sephora customers who were part of the Beauty Insider program who either are or are perceived as being of Chinese or Asian ethnicity and had their accounts blocked or deactivated following the website crash. The potential class is expected to be in the thousands.

The case is Xiao Xiao et al., v. Sephora USA Inc. et al., case number 14-cv-9181, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.  

Top Settlements

Boston Scientific Bellwether Results… A jury has awarded $18.5 million against Boston Scientific Corp in settlement of transvaginal mesh litigation brought by four women who alleged the implanted medical device left them with nerve damage, infections and pain during sex.

The trial was heard by a federal jury in West Virginia and is the second verdict against the company over defective vaginal slings. Last week a federal jury in Florida issued a $26.7 million verdict against Boston Scientific for providing insufficient warnings about the risks of its Pinnacle mesh device.

The four women in the West Virginia case sued Boston Scientific over the defective Obtryx transvaginal sling. “In these cases, the jurors clearly understood that Boston Scientific moved too quickly in bringing its product to market, and that it used inappropriate materials while at the same time failing to warn doctors and patients about the risks involved,” said on the of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs. Each of the women will receive $1 million in punitive damages under the terms of the settlement.

The multidistrict litigation being heard in Miami, also involved four women who alleged suffering and injury after having the sling implanted. It was the first federal bellwether trial against Boston Scientific, one of seven manufacturers of pelvic mesh that face about 60,000 lawsuits across the country.

Transvaginal Mesh and Transvaginal Slings are medical devices that are surgically implanted to treat Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP) and/or Stress Urinary Incontinence(SUI). 

Hokee Dokee—Time to adjourn for the week.  Have a fab weekend–See you at the bar!