2013 TTLA Pharmaceutical & Medical Device Seminar, April 25-26 | TTLA is proud to present its first-ever seminar dedicated solely to Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Litigation. Join highly experienced and successful mass tort lawyers, including many who serve in leadership roles on plaintiff steering committees, as they discuss the hottest topics in this dynamic and ever-changing area of law. TTLA legends and panels of Texas plaintiff attorneys will gather in Houston to discuss and debate a wide-range of mass tort topics, from marketing and pre-litigation to voir dire and trial. So join us in Houston on April 25-26, 2013 to learn from some of the best Pharmaceutical and Medical Device lawyers in the country. Click on the headline to learn more. | Suit Filed over Defective Guard Rail Heads | | Recently unsealed documents show a whistle blower lawsuit alleging that there are hundreds of thousands of defective guard rail heads installed on highways across the county. The lawsuit names Trinity Highway Products, makers of guard rail heads, as one of the main defendants. Dale Russell, myfoxatlanta.com 02/04/2013 | Read Article: myfoxatlanta.com | Oregon Woman Files Discrimination Lawsuit | | An Oregon woman has filed a $6.7 million lawsuit against two state agencies, claiming she was fired for "pointing out financial irregularities" and because she is Native American. In her suit, the plaintiff says she began experiencing discrimination in 2009 after first pointing out the irregularities; over the next two years she was kept out of meetings and denied job duties, and in 2012 she was fired. The suit claims the state violated whistle blower laws. Queenie Wong, Statesman Journal 02/09/2013 | Read Article: Statesman Journal | NY Landowners' Group: Allow Fracking or We'll Sue | | A landowners' coalition says it's laying the groundwork for a lawsuit against New York state if regulators miss a Feb. 27 deadline to complete rules for shale gas development. Dan Fitzsimmons, president of the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, tells members on the coalition's website that the decision whether to release the regulations or let them expire is being made for purely political reasons. The class-action lawsuit would claim an illegal government "taking" under the Fifth Amendment, which says private property can't be taken for public use without just compensation. Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle 02/11/2013 | Read Article: San Francisco Chronicle | Foodborne Illness on Physicians’ Radar as Cases Rise | | A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showed that norovirus caused a majority of the nation’s foodborne disease outbreaks between 1998 and 2008. During the study period, norovirus triggered 1,419 outbreaks and 41,257 outbreak-associated illnesses. In those cases, food is not contaminated where it is grown, but rather is tainted by someone cooking or storing the products, the CDC said. The data were published online Jan. 29 in the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. Christine S. Moyer, American Medical News 02/11/2013 | Read Article: American Medical News | Off Duty, Under Scrutiny | | In recent years, Texas boards that oversee the growing number of state-regulated occupations have punished licensed professionals not for on-the-job missteps that imperil the public, but for legal behavior that occurs outside of work hours — often saying the incidents dishonor the profession or indicate character failings that might seep into their work. Legal critics say the cases are based on an unproven connection between off-duty behavior and acceptable work performance, and that they distract licensing boards from attending to genuine public threats. Once regulators begin linking professional licenses to personal behavior that, while perhaps objectionable is not against the law, they say it’s hard to know where to stop. Eric Dexheimer, Austin American Statesman 02/11/2013 | Read Article: Austin American Statesman | No One Fix to Slow Hospital Readmission Epidemic | | Nearly 1 in 5 Medicare patients is hospitalized again within a month of going home, and many of those return trips could have been avoided. But readmissions can happen at any age, not just with the over-65 crowd who are counted most closely. The AP teamed with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to explore, through the eyes of patients, the myriad roadblocks to recovery that make it so difficult to trim unneeded readmissions. There is no single solution. But what's clear is that hospitals will have to reach well outside their own walls if they're to make a dent in readmissions. LAURAN NEERGAARD, Associated Press , Yahoo News 02/11/2013 | Read Article: Yahoo News | Suit Settled over Man's Death At Oil Well | | Marathon Oil has agreed to settle a wrongful death suit after a Montana man was found dead in a North Dakota well in 2012. The suit, filed by the victim's mother, claimed the man died from hydrocarbon poisoning caused by the inhalation of petroleum vapors. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Wire Report, The Spokesman-Review 02/10/2013 | Read Article: The Spokesman-Review | | |