Louisiana Legal News Articles & Interviews

Baton Rouge, LA Another death has been revealed from faulty Takata defective airbags after a man from Louisiana succumbed to his airbag injuries following a crash in July. The death has been confirmed by Honda, the manufacturer of the car the victim was driving when the accident took place. The death, revealed to Honda and the media late last month, brings to 20 the number of deaths worldwide that have been attributed to the problematic airbags.

New Orleans, LA:With three federal bellwether cases having gone to the defendant and a fourth in state court favoring the plaintiff, the judge heading up the 18,500 consolidated cases in federal court has signaled he is looking for guidance from the various parties involved, with oral arguments on the docket for the end of the month following a status report. The Xarelto Lawsuit MDL is under the guidance and management of US District Judge Eldon Fallon in US District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana.

St. Paul, MN: Seventeen months after open-heart surgery where a Stockert 3T heater-cooler system device was used, a man died from M. chimaera and doctors associated the deadly infection with the heater-cooler unit. His wife is one of several people who, in the past few months is seeking legal action against the manufacturer.


Plaintiff Danna Brackenbury filed a complaint in September, 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota against manufacturer Sorin Group Deutschland GmbH and the Sorin Group USA, Inc. After Brackenbury’s husband suffered a heart attack and underwent surgery at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, he developed a slow-growing, Mycobacterium chimaera (M. chimaera) infection. The operative word here is “slow”: the deceased complained to his doctor in July 2016 of fatigue and sudden, rapid weight loss. Two months passed until he was prescribed antibiotics to treat the infection, but it was too late. Hospital doctors confirmed that the Stockert 3T device was used during surgery.


Less than one month after his death the FDA released an updated safety communication warning that cardiothoracic surgery with Stockert 3T heater-cooler devices had been linked with M. chimaera infections. And the CDC issued an alert on Oct. 13, 2016, advising U.S. hospitals that used the device to alert patients to the potential for NTM, a rare form of bacteria called non-tuberculous mycobacterium.


But the manufacturer knew about the link for several years. And tracking the source of NTM began more than a decade ago in Western Europe hospitals. In 2015 a hospital in Eastern Pennsylvania identified such infections among patients who had undergone open-heart surgery there.


Also in Pennsylvania, a lawsuit was filed in July 2016 against the Stockert 3T manufacturer (the hospital in question is not mentioned). According to the Pennsylvania Record, plaintiff Richard Whipkey underwent an aortic valve replacement in May 2015 and one year later he developed “unexplained symptoms” that lab tests determined was the deadly infection. Richard and Elizabeth Whipkey are requesting a jury trial for both compensatory and punitive damages. The case is: U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania case number 1:17-cv-01233-JEJ.


Several parents have filed complaints against Children's Hospital of New Orleans after their children developed mycobacterium abscessus bacterial infections after undergoing heart surgery this past summer, reported Fox 8 News (Sept 13, 2017). At least one dozen children have been diagnosed with the infection and a hospital spokesperson says that many more children could be infected. The Children's Hospital infections showed up nine months after the CDC warning was issued last October.


Part of the CDC report warned the following: "Although thousands of patients in the United States have been notified regarding potential exposure to contaminated heater-cooler devices, the number who were exposed might be much larger. Over 250,000 procedures using cardiopulmonary bypass are performed in the United States each year.”


Children's Hospital Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Heaton said the hospital had two 'Stockert 3Ts' when they received the CDC report. And one of the devices was involved in the FDA advisory. The hospital has assumed all cost of treatment for families affected by this infection, Fox 8 reported. An attorney for the parents of Children's Hospital patients said that "Our goal and charge is to figure out what Children's Hospital knew, when and what they should have done." The parents may also file a product liability suit against the manufacturer.

Philadelphia, PA: The first trial in the large Xarelto mass tort in Philadelphia is underway, with damning testimony already on the record from a former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While three bellwether lawsuits have already been tried in multidistrict litigation in Louisiana, the Xarelto lawsuit brought by plaintiff Lynn Hartman is the first of some 1,500 cases housed in the Philadelphia mass tort to face a jury.

Philadelphia, PA On September 19, 2017, six burn victims filed a lawsuit against Tristar Products, Inc. in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. They claimed they were hurt when their Tristar pressure cooker’s advertised “Built-In Safety Features” failed. All of the incidents cited in In Re: Kenneth Christian, et al. v. Tristar Products Inc. involve the same pressure cooker, Model No. PPC-790, but many Tristar products have been implicated in similar pressure cooker explosions. The litigation can be expected to grow.

New Orleans, LA: A recent hernia mesh lawsuit was filed at the end of September in Louisiana by a plaintiff who underwent surgical repair for a hernia a year ago this month, only to experience surgical mesh side effects that necessitated revision surgery just six months later. The Bard Ventralex ST Hernia Mesh, manufactured by C.R. Bard (Bard) and Davol Inc. (Davol), is alleged to have left plaintiff Richard Stipelcovich in “excruciating” abdominal pain.

New Orleans, LA: On September 7, 2017, the judge overseeing the multidistrict Taxotere hair loss litigation (MDL) issued a pre-trial order that compels attorneys to submit information about all pending and anticipated Taxotere lawsuits. The goal is to bring as many plaintiffs as possible into any settlement reached.

New Orleans, LA:. Officials at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans have acknowledged that a dozen children were infected with mycobacterium abscessus following heart surgery during June and July of this year. Hospital officials fear that more cases may still appear. The source of the infections appears to be a contaminated Stockert 3-T heater-cooler device, and parents are reportedly considering heart surgery infection lawsuits.


The heater-cooler surgical devices, designed to control the temperature of a patient’s blood and organs during heart bypass surgery, have been linked to a host of bacterial infections. Research presented this June at the 44th Annual Conference of Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology found potentially deadly Mycobacterium chimaera contamination in 37 percent of the units examined between June 2015 and December 2016. In addition, the study found other non-tuberculous mycobacteria, Legionella, and fungi.


In October 2016, both the Centers for Disease Control  and the Food and Drug Administration specifically warned about the risks to patients posed by the use of Stockert 3T heater-cooler devices during surgery. The FDA blocked imports of the heater-cooler devices at the time. Studies warning of the risk of infection and safety communications regarding use of the heater-cooler devices, however, date back 15 years to 2002. 


The devices have water tanks that provide temperature-controlled water during surgery through closed circuits. The water in the instrument does not come into direct contact with the patient, but it can aerosolize through the device’s exhaust vent. The aerosol, if contaminated, may transmit bacteria to the patient. Disinfection of the closed circuit systems has proved to be problematic. Symptoms of bacterial infection arising from the contaminated units may include fever, fatigue, pain, nausea, vomiting, and weight loss. These may be particularly dangerous in very young and very vulnerable pediatric patients.


Stockert 3T lawsuits arising from the infections at the New Orleans Children's Hospital could potentially target both the manufacturer for negligent design or production of the devices and the hospital, for professional malpractice, since it had notice of the risk of infection and the need for careful decontamination long before the surgeries occurred. If the parents choose to litigate, these lawsuits will join a host of other Stockert 3T infection lawsuits now pending in in the U.S. and Canada, some of which seek class action certification.

Denver, CO: We’re just beyond the second anniversary of the release, and publication of a study in August, 2015 that placed a particular focus on IVC filters manufactured by Cook Medical, and their Cook Celect IVC filter line. It should be noted that inferior vena cava filters made by other manufacturers have been similarly problematic and have suffered failures not unlike those of Cook Celect filters.

Santa Clara, CA: As the litigation shakes out, that question is at the heart of Taxotere hair loss suits now pending in federal courts in Louisiana and other jurisdictions. But whether Sanofi-Aventis had a duty to warn patients is more complicated than it might appear. It requires courts to define what responsibility pharmaceutical companies have to the patients who look to them for a cure.