For the Plaintiff Blog

Jason Shamblin March 31st, 2009

 Cory Watson Crowder and DeGaris accuses Yamaha of ignoring repeated complaints about deadly Rhino dangers  

(Birmingham, AL) March 31, 2009 -   Yamaha Motor Corp USA today recalled one of the most popular off road vehicles on the market- the Yamaha Rhino. Yamaha and the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued the recall affecting some 120 thousand vehicles and warned Rhino owners not to operate their vehicles until taking them into a dealership for repairs and safety modifications.  All Rhino 450 and 660 model vehicles were included in the recall. The action comes after more than 46 deaths and hundreds of catastrophic injuries were reported in Rhino accidents across the U.S.

“Yamaha has known of these serious safety threats for years, but has repeatedly failed to admit there’s a problem.” said attorney Jason Shamblin of the Cory Watson Crowder & DeGaris law firm. “Today’s Rhino recall amounts to an admission that the Rhino is dangerous. It has serious design flaws that can lead to deadly accidents even when the vehicles are operated at low speed on flat terrain.”   Lawsuits filed against Yamaha allege the Rhino is prone to rollover accidents, and because of defects in its design, may result in broken or crushed arms, legs, feet, and ankles. 

Shamblin says Cory Watson is at the forefront of Yamaha Rhino litigation, representing one hundred fifty people injured or killed in Rhino accidents. “Hundreds of people have suffered devastating, life-changing injuries and many have died because of the design defects in the Yamaha Rhino,” said Shamblin who notes that the lawsuits allege Yamaha knew of the dangers, yet failed to adequately warn consumers. Shamblin points out that in 2007 Yamaha  issued its first recall, offering to retrofit older models with doors.

“With this second recall, I can’t contemplate that Yamaha would continue to deny in litigation that its Rhino has serious design flaws”, said Shamblin. As Rhino owners learn more about the safety issues, hundreds of lawsuits hang in the balance. The United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation recently ordered that all Yamaha Rhino rollover Federal lawsuits be consolidated before a Federal Judge in Kentucky. The action centralizes the Federal suits into Multidistrict Litigation (“MDL”) so that all pretrial discovery and litigation from all Federal Rhino cases will be heard in one court.

Cory Watson Crowder & DeGaris is recognized nationally for its practice in multidistrict litigation and complex litigation including class actions, personal injury, products liability, business and securities litigation, environmental litigation and mass torts litigation of defective medical devices and pharmaceuticals.

For more information please contact rhino@cwcd.com or phone toll free 1-800-852-6299

• Yamaha Rhino accidents , deaths
• Comments(0)

Leila Watson March 30th, 2009

Opinion essay published in The Birmingham News
Sunday, March 29, 2009 ERNEST CORY and LEILA H. WATSON
Accountability. If a company manufactures what it knows to be a potentially dangerous drug and sells it without adequate instruction of how to use it safely, the manufacturer should be held accountable when a patient is harmed because the instructions were deficient.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court held in a 6-3 decision of Wyeth v. Levine, that this basic rule of accountability, which we were all taught, and which we have all passed on to our own children, also applies to corporate drug manufacturers: You are responsible for your own actions.

Diana Levine, suffering a migraine headache, went to a Vermont medical clinic for a treatment she had received many times: Demerol for pain and Phenergan for nausea. On this occasion, however, the medications were administered by “IV push.” The Phenergan was exposed to arterial blood, and caused swift and irreversible gangrene. Levine’s right hand and forearm had to be amputated. Wyeth, the manufacturer, knew that Phenergan should not be administered by IV push because of this very risk, yet failed to warn doctors against it.

Wyeth argued that the Food and Drug Administration is responsible for the labeling on Phenergan and all other pharmaceuticals sold in the United States, and therefore no drug company can ever be sued for mistakes and failures in the labels and warnings. Wyeth wanted legal immunity for any harm caused by its products, even in cases like Levine’s lawsuit, where the patient could prove Wyeth knew of the undisclosed risks.

The Supreme Court disagreed. Recognizing that the FDA is underfunded and overworked, the Supreme Court said “the FDA has limited resources to monitor the 11,000 drugs on the market, and manufacturers have superior access to information about their (own) drugs.” The court specifically said drug manufacturers, not the FDA, bear the primary responsibility at all times to ensure that instructions and warnings are complete and accurate. Drug companies – corporate America – must live by the same rules we do: Each of us is responsible – and accountable – for our own actions.

By sweeping aside legal immunity and federal pre-emption, the Levine decision restored the important role of jury trials. Filing a lawsuit and trying your case to a jury has been the foundation of our civil justice system since the drafting of the Constitution. But over the past decade, there has been a concerted effort, mostly by insurance companies, big tobacco, oil companies, multinational corporations and the George W. Bush administration, to discredit juries and the verdicts they reach.

Wyeth argued to the Supreme Court that a civil jury should not undermine the work of the FDA to approve drug warnings, and that the FDA was an agency of experts and no civil jury of lay people should be allowed to second-guess the agency decisions to approve drug labels. In fact, as pointed out by the Supreme Court, the FDA relies on the civil justice system to provide “an additional, and important, layer of consumer protection that complements FDA regulation.”

Lawsuits and jury trials have produced evidence for public review of drug hazards even after the particular product has been approved by the FDA. Vioxx, the blockbuster pain reliever manufactured by Merck & Co. Inc. is just one such example of a drug whose dangers were uncovered after injured patients hired attorneys. The lawyers opened up millions of pages of studies, documents and memos to experts and discovered that Vioxx caused an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, all of which led to the removal of Vioxx from the market, and the addition of strong warnings on other drugs in the same class.

No one should be able to act irresponsibly, cause harm and never face a jury to answer for his conduct. The Levine decision puts drug companies on the same level as the people who are harmed by their products and as those who sit on the juries.

• pharmaceutical litigation
• Comments(0)

Kristian Rasmussen March 13th, 2009

Retail giant Staples has joined the list of stores being forced to pay millions of dollars as a result of lawsuits challenging the way they classify and compensate employees.  On February 20, 2009, a jury in New Jersey ordered Staples to pay $2.5 million to employees whose class action suit claimed their deceiving titles of Manager and Assistant Manager wrongly exempted them from overtime pay. Staples argued the employees’ executive titles exempted the store from paying the workers overtime, but the employees accused the store of using the executive titles as a way of getting around an obligation to pay the overtime wages required under the Fair Labor Standards Act,(“FLSA.”)

The New Jersey award echoed a similar case in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where employees sued Family Dollar claiming they were classified as managers but did not perform any managerial duties.  Family Dollar employees routinely worked 60 to 70 hours a week performing duties that included mopping floors, unloading trucks, stocking shelves and running cash registers without receiving overtime pay because they were classified as store managers or assistant managers. The employees were awarded a $35.6 million dollar judgment. A Federal Appeals Court in Atlanta recently upheld the judgment against Family Dollar Stores.

In these suits involving overtime pay and job classification, juries have agreed with employees that the retailers’ efforts to circumvent the FLSA were not one-time violations. More suits are likely to expose the trend of retailers who have sought to cut costs by misclassifying workers, thus violating wage and hour laws.

Employment law experts at Cory Watson Crowder and DeGaris are interested in talking with employees of Staples, Family Dollar, Dollar General and other retail stores that may have misclassified employees making them exempt from overtime pay requirements.

For more information please contact attorneys Kristian Rasmussen (Krasmussen@cwcd.com) or Alyssa Daniels (Adaniels@cwcd.com) by e-mail or call toll free 1-800-852-6299.

• Employment law
• Comments(0)