Posts Tagged ‘ Seroquel ’

Week Adjourned: 8.13.10

August 13th, 2010. By LucyC

Top Class Actions

No Answer for No Answer Charges? A couple of major players in the telecommunications game got hit with class actions this week. First up—AT&T. The suit alleges violations of federal truth-in-billing laws, false advertising and deceptive trade practices under New York law, and breach of contract, among other things.

Lead plaintiff, Los Angeles resident Kenneth Thelian, claims he was charged $12.90 partly for calls that he did not answer. He allegedly complained to AT&T who reversed $8 of the charges, but the company representative “did not adequately explain why these charges were incurred.”

Thelian faced a further $15.81 in roaming charges while traveling in Montreal, Canada in August 2005, again for calls he did not answer. Then, in February and March of 2007, Thelian was billed $92.72. “The bill did not indicate which of these charges were for calls that he did not answer while traveling abroad,” the suit alleges.

So, maybe time to be checking those phone bills…

And, second up—T-Mobile. This class action alleges that the company puts limits on its unlimited data plan. Ummm. who would have thought…

The suit claims that advertisements for T-Mobile’s “Unlimited Web & E-mail” plans, offered for both Blackberry and other brands of smartphones, promise the consumer access to Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Astra Zeneca, ATT, Cell Phone, chinese drywall, Lowe's, Seroquel, T-mobile, Week Adjourned
Posted in Week Adjourned | 4714No Comments »Week+Adjourned%3A+8.13.102010-08-13+22%3A04%3A40LucyC

Week Adjourned: 8.6.10

August 6th, 2010. By admin

Top Class Actions

Could Say He was Over his Overdraft Fees. I think these guys deserve a Business As Usual, As Usual award. Commerce Bancshares, a Kansas City-based financial institution operating simply as Commerce Bank in the state of Missouri is being sued by a client who claims the company’s bank overdraft fees violate state law.

The plaintiff, Harold J. Joseph Jr., has accused the banking chain of manipulating the sequence of debit card purchases in an attempt to maximize the number and size of overdraft fees that they can impose.

Any of this sound familiar? Excessive bank overdraft fees lawsuits have been filed and/or settled against a variety of banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, M&T Bank and Wachovia. The lawsuits allege that banks charge excessive overdraft fees when customers’ accounts go into overdraft. They further allege that the banks use a number of unethical practices to push their accounts into overdraft, such as misrepresenting customers’ account balances and reordering debits and credits to accounts.

New regulations that will take effect by mid-August seek to rectify this problem by making overdraft protection an opt-in service and by regulating the terms of the action.

FYI: Information about Commerce Bancshares second quarter earnings were posted in a press release July 21. Those of you hit with excessive overdraft fees may find the numbers interesting…”Commerce Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: AstraZeneca, Audi, Commerce Bancshares, Overdraft fees, Seroquel, Volkswagon
Posted in Emerging Issues, Week Adjourned | 4648No Comments »Week+Adjourned%3A+8.6.102010-08-06+21%3A06%3A20admin

Week Adjourned: 7.23.10

July 23rd, 2010. By LucyC

Top Class Actions

HiPhone, HiPhone, it’s Off to Court we Go…Well, all you iPhone enthusiasts are clearly disappointed with the new iPhone 4 and its apparent lack of receptivity—would that be an appropriate term to describe an alleged antenna design flaw?

Let’s get to the point. Apple and AT&T got hit with a class action lawsuit filing this week, “seeking relief for consumers who purchased iPhone 4 cellular phones.”

To be blunt, the only way you could not know about the iPhone 4 antenna problem is if you live on another planet—or in a cave in some remote corner of the world that is not part of AT&T’s network. No doubt all you diehard Blackberry fans must be lovin it!

According to the complaint, the new iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million in its first week of sales, a figure that reportedly comes from Apple. That’s a loyal fan base. And woe betide you if you piss them off.

Here’s the skinny—”the phone retails for $199.00 for the 16GB model or $299.00 for the 32GB model with a 2-year contract (or $599.00 16GB / $699.00 32GB without a contract). Users pay Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: AIG, Astra Zeneca, AstraZeneca, iPhone, iPhone 4, Seroquel, spokeo.com
Posted in Week Adjourned | 44901 Comment »Week+Adjourned%3A+7.23.102010-07-23+20%3A21%3A15LucyC

Week Adjourned: 4.30.10

April 30th, 2010. By LucyC

Top Class Actions

Is GM cutting corners? Maybe. Certainly Jimmy Hendon believes they are, so he filed a class action lawsuit against the automotive manufacturer, over alleged unfair business practices associated with its extended warranty plans.

Mr. Hendon is claiming that GM improperly calculated his prorated cancellation refund associated with his GM Major Guard Vehicle Service Contract. Hendon purchased the extended warranty in 2006 as additional 12 month/44,000 mile coverage to the GM standard 36 month/36,000 mile factory warranty which came with the new 2006 Chevy Avalanche he had just bought. Hendon canceled the extended warranty in 2009, with 18,483 miles remaining on the contract.

Specifically, the complaint alleges that GM calculated Hendon’s refund by taking the remaining miles divided by the 80,000 total miles under warranty, resulting in a $295 refund. Hendon claims GM should have calculated his refund by dividing his remaining miles by the 44,000 mile extension, resulting in a $580 refund.

The suit claims that GM should be prorating the canceled refund by dividing the remaining miles or days by the number of miles or days that the service contract extended the factory warranty.

While you may think that $200 or $300 may not sound like much for GM—why would they bother?—if you multiply that sum over the potentially thousands of folk in similar situations to Jimmy—well heck, you might just have enough for a bailout payment…

The Gulf of Mexico Tragedy in the Making… Hopefully BP won’t get away with this environmental Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: AstraZeneca, BP, British Petroleum, Deepwater Horizon, GM, Johnson & Johnson, Oil Spill, Seroquel, Topamax, Week Adjourned
Posted in Week Adjourned | 3499No Comments »Week+Adjourned%3A+4.30.102010-04-30+20%3A42%3A20LucyC

Seroquel in the US…Seroquel in the EU…

October 9th, 2009. By AbiK

seroquel Seroquel in the US...Seroquel in the EU... I was reading Jane’s post on drug companies’ unethical marketing tactics and thinking about Seroquel. As Jane pointed out (and as is reported over at bloomberg.com yesterday), Seroquel’s manufacturer, Astra Zeneca,

“advised its sales force to promote the antipsychotic drug Seroquel as “weight neutral” four years after company research found “clinically significant” weight gains in users, internal documents show.”

Now, given this revelation, and given Seroquel’s reported link to increased risk of diabetes, one might question what’s going on over in the EU where a panel recently gave AstraZeneca the green light for the prevention of major depression recurrence.

In a quote from the company (businessweek.com, 9/29/09),

“Following this new indication, Seroquel and Seroquel XR are the only agents approved in the European Union to treat all phases of bipolar disorder acute depressive episodes, acute manic episodes and maintenance treatment to prevent recurrence of any mood event in bipolar disorder.”

Oh, and in case you forgot, an application for the same (ie, to treat major depressive disorder) has been pending in the US since being filed in February, 2008.

Makes you wonder if the two continents across the pond from one another ever speak to one another…

Tags: Seroquel
Posted in Drugs/Medical | 1537No Comments »2009-10-10+00%3A54%3A08AbiK