Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Product Liability

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Health-Technoogy-Hazards-scaledWhile health technology is often synonymous with progress, some medical devices can be dangerous and lead to patient injury and death. Every, year the ECRI Institute compiles a list of the 10 most hazardous technologies in healthcare. This year the Top 10 health hazards are:

1. Confusing recalls of at-home medical devices

This health hazard arises from Philips’ chaotic recall of defective respirators that cost the lives of hundreds of  at home patients suffering from sleep apnea.  Between April 2021 and October 2022, the FDA received 260 reports of  patients who died while using the Philips respirator. The device was recalled but the manufacturer contacted mostly healthcare providers which were supposed to pass the information to their patients. The process was chaotic and many patients were never proprely informed. As a result, they continued to use the defective device and died. Some patients were contacted directly by the manufacturer, but the notification was unclear. The language was technological jargon that patients did not understand proprely.

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Best Law Firms - Standard BadgeOur firm is proud to announce that for the 13th consecutive year it has been named by U.S. News – Best Lawyers ® “Best Law Firms” a Tier 1 Firm in New York City for:

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The lithium battery of this bike might be defectiveAncheer is recalling the potentially defective lithium battery of 22,000 e-bikes. The recall decision was made after the company received 6 reports of accidents that include batteries igniting and causing sparks, fires and/or explosions. Among the 6 accidents reported, 4 resulted in burn injuries.

The battery recalled is a cylindrical battery that looks like a water bottle and is mounted on the Ancheer e-bikes model AM001907. The model number can not be found on the bike but on the packaging and on the user manual.

The recalled Ancheer e-bikes models were sold between January 2016 and June 2022 by major retailers including Walmart, Sears, Amazon, eBay, Overstock, Aliexpress, Ancheer, Newegg, Rakuten and Wish.

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MeFDA-logodtronic HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device (HVAD) device caused the wrongful death of more than 3,000 people since it was introduced on the market more than 10 years ago. The sale and distribution of the heart pump was stopped in June last year but many patients still have the pump implanted in them. Now some of the batteries powering the device might be deadly too.

Medtronic announced last May that a model of battery that was powering the Medtronic HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device (HVAD) was defective and that it could cause serious personal injury or death if it was not changed for a new battery. An urgent Medical Device Correction letter was sent out by Medtronic to all affected customers on May 5th  recalling 429 devices manufactured in April 2021. Then a month later, after the company received 1,159 complaints including 6  injuries and one death, the recall of the same model of batteries was extended to those that were distributed since January 2009.

The recall affects 23,372 Medtronic HVDA Batteries with model number 1650DE that were distributed between January 1st 2009 and now

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lithium-battery-can-be-deadly-2An e-bike battery explosion caused a deadly fire in Harlem, NYC, inside NYCHA’s Jackie Robinson Houses.

5 year old Erika Williams was sleeping in a an apartment with her dad Erik Williams and his 36 year old girlfriend Chanise Anderson when a little after 2:30 am on Wednesday morning, the lithium battery of an e-bike stored next to the apartment entrance door exploded and created a fire.

The fire and heavy smoke prevented the toddler and the girlfriend to escape while the father covered in flames ran into the hallway screaming for help. He is still in the hospital in critical condition. The 5 year old girl and the girlfriend both died. 3 dogs also died in the fire.

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hospital patientMore than 150 models of medical devices manufactured by more than 100 manufacturers and equipped with PTC Axeda agent and Axeda Desktop Server  have dangerous cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could potentially harm patients. The Axeda agent and Axeda Desktop server  sold by PTC are  components allowing one or more people to view and operate the same remote desktop, through the Internet. However,  it was recently found that hard-coded credentials were used in these components making them particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Hard code credential  is a practice used by software developers in which authentication data such as password are embedded directly in the source code. This practice was identified 9 years ago as a significant cybersecurity threat and is considered outdated and dangerous. It is particularly concerning that medtech vendor PT  is still selling products using this technology, especially products providing remote support functionality which are among the most targeted by hackers.  Hard code credential vulnerabilities, if exploited, allow hackers to fully access the system, execute remote code, change the configuration, read or save changes directly to files and folders on the user’s device, access user’s login information and flood the targeted device or network with traffic until the target cannot respond or simply crashes, preventing access for legitimate users. Designing medical devices containing such outdated and dangerous components is negligence that can cause injury or death to patients.

Defective medical devices with cybersecurity flaws are considered the number one health technology hazards in 2022 by the ECRI Institute. The FDA issued a cybersecurity alert and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an advisory with a detailed description of the vulnerabilities,  recommendations to mitigate them and a list of the main manufacturers  using Axeda agent and Axeda Desktop servers in some of their products. Among them are Accuracy, Agilent, Bayer, BD, Elektra, GE, Roche Diagnostic, Smith Medical and Varian. These manufacturers have all released their own information in regards to affected products.

Read more in Medtech Dive

 

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IPhone_12_-_3A recent study found that strong magnets in some electronic devices can interfere with the good functioning of  pacemakers and result in potential injury or death for the wearer.   “If you carry a portable electronic device close to your chest and have a history of tachycardia (rapid heartbeat) with an ICD, strong magnets in these devices could disable your cardioverter defibrillator,” said lead author Corentin Féry, a research engineer at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Institute for Medical Engineering and Informatics.

Devices that have been identified as potentially dangerous for people who have a cardioverter defibrillator are the new Apple 12, Apple Airpods charging cases, the second generation of Apple pencils and the Surface Pen from Microsoft. In the study, researchers were able to deactivate five different types of defibrillators by simply putting the electronic devices next to the defibrillators. Deactivation would occur when Apple products were at a 0.78 inch distance from the pacemaker and 1.14 inches for the Microsoft pen.

The study is a confirmation of a previous warning by the FDA that some electronic devices such as mobile phones and smart watches might cause some medical devices implanted in patients to switch to “magnet mode”. Many implanted medical devices are designed with a “magnet mode”,  which is a safety features that for example allows patient with such devices to undergo some medical procedures such as MRI. However this safety feature can actually become dangerous for patients, especially those wearing a pacemaker, if an electronic device such as a cellphone can switch the pacemaker to “magnet mode”.

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annabis edible are attractive to childrenMore and more children are getting injured after ingesting cannabis products that are being packaged in multicolor packaging and look like children treats. Hospitals are seeing an increase in young children getting poisoned after inadvertently ingesting THC edible products.

Most cannabis edible products look like regular children treats such as gummy bear, chocolate bars, candies, lollipop with packaging that are colorful and attractive to children. Some of them even mimic famous brands of candies such as the THC infused Zombie Skittles whose manufacturer was recently sued by Wrigleys, the manufactured of the “real Skittles”.

In a recent article, the Children Hospital of Philadelphia, Center for Injury Research and Prevention, describes the case of an elementary school child who went to a local grocery store with her parents and picked a “Krispy Treat” snack.  The parents did not notice that the colorful packaging of the treat indicated that the treat contained delta-8-THC which is now sold in the Philadelphia region as a “legal high”.  The child ingested the entire snack and only at dinner time parents noticed that their daughter started to get distressed, holding her head, becoming drowsy and loosing her balance. They rushed the child to the emergency room where she was hooked to a respirator and transferred to the intensive care unit until doctors figured out that testing showed that she was poisoned by THC and that she would recover soon.

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Tesla Motors is facing product liability lawsuitsA man who was seriously injured and whose wife died after their Tesla struck a fire truck while on Autopilot mode is suing Tesla for personal injury and wrongful death. Derek Monet was driving his car on autopilot on a highway in Indiana in December 2019 when the car crashed into the rear of a fire truck that was responding to an accident and was stopped on the road.  Derek suffered a broken spine and a broken femur and his wife died in the accident

In his claim Derek says Tesla knew that its software failed to react to emergency vehicles with flashing lights but did not recall its vehicles to update the software.  The claim was filed  after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation last year and asked Tesla to release its non-disclosure agreements with drivers who were testing the “full-self” driving system. The NHTSA is aware of 11 similar accidents during which Tesla cars struck emergency vehicles with flashing lights and wants to know why the car manufacturer did not recall its vehicles after it transmitted a wireless software update designed to prevent crashes into stationary objects.

The 68 page lawsuit demonstrates how Elon Musk and other executives were well aware that the autopilot was not safe but that the company continued to “hype”  its cars as if they were

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HyundaiSome Kia vehicles may have defective airbags that may not deploy proprely in case of an accident according to a recall issued yesterday by the company.  The recall is affecting 410,000 vehicles including:

  • 253,281 Kia Soul manufactured between July 25, 2016 and December 24, 2018
  • 47,690 Kia Sedona manufactured between July 12, 2016 and January 10, 2019
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