A class action lawsuit was filed against the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline for allegedly promoting Paxil®, an antidepressant drug, for use by children and adolescents while withholding negative information about the medication's safety and effectiveness.
The class filed in Edwardsville, Illinois seeks to include all US residents who bought Paxil® or Paxil CR® for their children.
Madison County Associate Judge Ralph Mendelsohn has approved a $63.8 million class action settlement. GlaxoSmithKline denies the lawsuit's claims, but has agreed to pay to settle the claims.
This case was reported to the press on November 1, 2006. We will follow the progress and see if the pharmaceutical company dispenses its words.
In May 2005, two separate class actions: one concerning hourly employees – mostly food prep workers, cleaning staff and counter workers and the other concerning restaurant managers, representing 6,400 current and former employees were filed against Boston Market restaurants for allegedly violating California wage and hour laws.
The first suit claimed that 6,315 hourly workers often worked through meal and rest periods, did off-the-clock work and were not paid overtime. The second class complained that 122 managers were incorrectly classified as exempt from overtime pay.
On October 11 this year, U.S. District Court Judge Barry T. Moskowitz in San Diego approved a ruling for a class action settlement with Boston Market paying a total of $3.75 million, with individual general managers receiving up to $6,680 in back pay. In addition, the settlement stipulated that managers' positions would be reclassified to nonexempt status on Dec. 31, making them eligible for overtime. Some hourly workers will receive as much as $2,800.
Four hours before it was scheduled to start, Rolling Stones cancelled their October 27 concert in Atlantic City, New Jersey due to a sore throat problem developed by lead singer Mick Jagger.
This has caused "heartache and anguish" to the fans of the famous rock band – at least to one Rosalie Druyan from Brooklyn who immediately filed a class action lawsuit in the Manhattan Supreme Court.
The lawsuit accused the rock legends of fraud, specifically for acting in bad faith claiming that, "Jagger sought medical attention before the concert and knew he would not perform but did not disclose that in time for ticket holders to cancel travel reservations."
The federal government filed charges against one of Lakewood’s largest private schools, for allegedly providing false information to obtain funds for preschoolers' lunches.
The gist of the case:
Between 1996 and 2000, Lakewood Cheder School submitted claims for school lunches for more than 1,100 preschool-age children, but served them at 90 private residences, which are ineligible and unapproved sites under the program.
To compound the problem, the school allegedly submitted the false information and statements to the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the state Bureau of Child Nutrition, the United States. As a consequence, this resulted in excessive payments – amounting to $953,421 -- to Lakewood Cheder under the National School Lunch Program.
This year’s edition of The Annual Aviation Health Conference will be held on 2nd to 3rd November 2006 at the Holiday Inn Regents Park in London, UK. The gathering will put a great deal on travel-related health issues, one of the biggest challenges facing the aviation industry today.
Participants, recognizing new threats to passenger safety constantly appearing, is expected to tackle an assortment of health research and regulations, and has drawn the most important issues that need to be discussed -- that of the transmission of infectious diseases in aircraft, DVT, cabin air quality and environment, cosmic radiation and in-flight medical incidents.
"It's a surcharge that nobody agrees to, nobody knows anything about it until the delivery person is at the door."
Those words -- and giant courier service United Parcel Service (UPS) is slapped with a lawsuit regarding brokerage fees charged for items shipped from the US to Canada. The lawsuit, which is seeking class action status, claims that UPS charges an undisclosed brokerage fee once the package has been delivered – this on top of the standard shipping and handling fees and government levies.
The case originated from the ire of one Robert Macfarlane, who, after purchasing an amplified telephone device from Arizona over the Internet last year, complained of the $38.40 brokerage fee charged by UPS.
This is getting to be mundane yet it never refuses to attract the annoyance of the public: when companies paste cautionary statements in their product labels, which to some finicky consumers can appear misleading – or something like the alleged damaging loudness of the gadget in question -- by Motorola.
It can only get ambiguous because, according to one Martin Alpert from California, Motorola had “actual and constructive knowledge” that its Bluetooth headsets “posed a serious risk of harm to consumers from noise-induced hearing loss during the headsets' normal and intended use.” Thus prompted the man to file a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court.
The Disability Rights Legal Center on behalf of disabled people, on October 17 filed a class action lawsuit that seeks a federal injunction against San Bernardino County and the Superior Court of the State of California for lack of adequate facilities for people with disabilities. The class would require immediate physical modifications to five county courthouses in Redlands, San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga.
The class claims that the County and the State violated federal and state laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, the California Rehabilitation Act and the First, Fifth and 14th amendments to the US Constitution.
The cities of San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Chicago have sued several web-based travel clearinghouses including Expedia Inc., Travelocity, Hotels.com, and Orbitz for allegedly failing to pay millions of dollars in hotel taxes.
The combined class-action lawsuits seek to recover lost taxes. For one, the city of San Antonio estimates loses as much as $2 million annually in missed tax revenue incurred by at least 16 online agencies. Officials of two other biggest Texas cities, Dallas and Houston, say they could potentially join with San Antonio in the suit filed in federal district court in San Antonio, but are considering their own actions.
A class action lawsuit was filed by BC and Ontario residents in Canada against the Ford Motor Co. which from 1983 to 1995 produced a dozen different models with defective engine modules. The Thick Film Ignition (TFI) module was mounted on the vehicle's distributor and often failed from overheating, causing the vehicle to stall.
In a report dated October 2, 2006, the BC Supreme Court has approved a $1.5 million class action settlement from Ford Motor for the defective TFI module. To those who replaced the modules or need the part replaced, Ford has agreed to pay up to $325 each.
Actually, it took a while for Canada to follow suit. It can be recalled that on December 9, 2002, after five years of litigation, a settlement was reached in a national class action in Alameda County Superior Court in California -- Howard v. Ford Motor Co. -- that reimbursed owners who complained of same problem.