Judge Rules Meningitis Victims Can Pursue Product Liability Claims

In a ruling lawyers for victims of a fatal fungal meningitis outbreak are calling a major victory, a federal judge has ruled they can continue to pursue millions of dollars in claims against health care providers under a Tennessee product liability law.
In the decision issued just before a long holiday weekend, U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel ruled against a series of dismissal motions filed by the attorneys for Tennessee health care providers who contended the claims were subject to the strict new requirements of the new state health care liability law.
Attorneys for the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgical Center had also argued that the suits did not comply with the requirements of that state health care law, including giving 60 days prior notice to health care providers before filing a suit.
Rejecting that argument, Zobel wrote that the "claims are not really about the provision of health care services, but the defects of a product... Plaintiffs did not have to give pre-suit notice." 
The 2012 meningitis outbreak has been blamed by state and federal regulators on tainted spinal steroids produced at NECC, the now defunct Massachusetts drug compounding company.
Mark Chalos, a Nashville attorney representing several victims called Zobel's decision a clear victory and that she had clearly rejected the defendant's arguments
"This is an important victory for Tennessee victims," he said.
 C.J. Gideon, one of the Saint Thomas attorneys, noted in an email response that Zobel's ruling did dismiss several of the claims by the plaintiffs.
He said he was very pleased with the ruling.
 Zobel did grant some of the Saint Thomas dismissal motions including an allegation by the plaintiffs that NECC and the Nashville clinic had engaged in a civil conspiracy to violate a Massachusetts requirement for compounding pharmacies. Some claims under the Tennessee consumer protection act also were dismissed.
She concluded that the evidence provided did not back up that claim.
Nonetheless Zobel  took note of the charge that Saint Thomas provided NECC with a "bogus list" of patients including one named "Mickey Mouse."
Zobel also dismissed some claims against Ascension Health, the parent company of Saint Thomas.
The 2012 outbreak caused 64 deaths across the country and sickened 751 patients. All were injected with methylprednisolone acetate shipped by NECC.
In a pending bankruptcy case in federal court in Massachusetts, a judge has approved a settlement that would provide some $100 million to creditors, including victims and their survivors. NECC filed for bankruptcy in late 2012.

Bankruptcy Settlement OK'd by court

 July 31, 2014

Bankruptcy Settlement OK'd by court

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Henry Boroff today formally approved a $100 million settlement in the case of the New England Compounding Company, the firm blamed for a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak.
In a six-page decision, Boroff granted a motion filed by the bankruptcy trustee Paul Moore.
The settlement includes payments from NECC's owners and related parties along with insurance companies that had provided NECC with coverage.
The payments will go to creditors including hundreds of victims of the outbreak and their survivors.
Boroff said Moore's settlement motion "is granted in all respects."
Just how the money will be divvied up among victims and creditors will be determined after a formal plan is submitted and approved by the judge.
The 2012 outbreak killed 64 patients, with the largest number of victims getting treatment in Michigan. Over 750 were sickened.

Rothman, Nazareth battle tainted steroid claim

The well known Rothman Institute and Nazareth Hospital have been named as defendants in a suit now pending in U.S. District Court in Boston in which a 73-year-old Philadelphia man contends he was injected with a tainted steroid which sickened him.
The suit is one of dozens filed as a result of illnesses, some of them fatal, blamed on drugs produced by the now defunct New England Compounding Company, which operated in Framingham, Mass.
The case is unusual, however, because the victim, William Lewis, contends he was infected with a different steroid than the methylprednisolone acetate which state and federal officials say sickened 751 patients across the country, killing 64. No deaths were reported by the CDC in Pennsylvania, but one case of fungal meningitis was confirmed.
According to the complaint, which was originally filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, Lewis was injected in the spine with a drug called triamcinolone acetonide on Sept. 25, 2012 at Nazareth Hospital in Philadelphia.
Lawyers for Rothman, Nazareth and Dr. William A. Anderson, have denied charges ranging from negligence to violations of product liability statutes. The attorneys did not respond to email requests for comment.
According to the complaint, Lewis was informed by Anderson and Nazareth Hospital that he had been injected with a drug produced by NECC that may have been contaminated.
Within days of getting the injection, court records state, Lewis "experienced sharp head pain, blurred vision and pain in the eyes."
The complaint states that Anderson told Lewis to go the an emergency room immediately.
"Upon learning of the contamination in October 2012, plaintiff became hysterical, unnerved, distraught, fearful of additional complications," the suit states.

While denying any negligence, lawyers for Nazareth acknowledged informing Lewis that he had been injected with a drug from NECC
In their responses, lawyers for Rothman, Nazareth and Anderson denied any negligence and asserted that as healthcare providers they were not subject to product liability statutes because they provided a service and were not sellers of the steroid in question. Nazareth is one of multiple sites in the Philadelphia are where Rothman provides orthopedic services.
The Lewis' suit is one of only a handful in which plaintiffs contend they were sickened by an NECC drug other than the methylprednisolone acetate cited by state and federal regulators as the cause of the record 2012 outbreak of fungal meningitis.
In one recent development in the case, lawyers for Lewis and his wife, have filed a motion in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Massachusetts seeking a waiver from a deadline for filing a claim in the pending NECC bankruptcy.
Under a proposed settlement in the bankruptcy, victims and other creditors would share a little over $100 million in insurance payments and contributions by NECC's owners.