Mazda 3 Model Years 2004-2007 Defects Lead To Thefts

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

A Message for Current and Former Mazda 3 Owners

Do you own a Mazda 3 from the model years 2004-2007? If so, you may be the owner of a faulty product. These models may have a defect that allows the doors to be unlocked simply by kicking or driving a shoulder into a section above the door handle.

This defect has left the personal property of tens of thousands of Mazda owners vulnerable to theft. Furthermore, there is evidence that Mazda knew about this defect and failed to act quickly to resolve the problem. As a result, personal property has been taken, and many cars have either been vandalized or stolen.

The Defect: The door lock mechanism in thousands of Mazdas sold in Canada has been shown to be defective. Potential thieves did not need a skeleton key or any other tool to open the door. The problem was a combination of factors, mainly involving low strength in the “skin” of the door, a lack of structural support between the door skin and the key lock barrel and door lock module, and a structural door lock design that requires a downward motion to disengage the lock. In other words, the locking mechanism was built in a way that allows the individual parts to be jarred out of alignment quite easily.

The Costs: It did not take long for thieves to figure out that this defect existed, and they began to exploit it very quickly. Police in Canada became aware that many Mazda 3’s that had been broken into had similar telltale marks over the driver-side door handle. Personal effects were stolen out of vehicles and cars were vandalized, and initially, Mazda denied that there was a problem at all. Eventually a recall was negotiated with Mazda, and while they offered free or rebated repairs to fix the problem, they still made no offer to reimburse anyone for any stolen or damaged property that was taken or vandalized specifically due to the inherent defect of the locking mechanism.

 

The Issue: Although the defect and its subsequent instances of personal property loss were bad enough, that is only part of the problem here. Mazda manufactured, marketed and sold a product that was not safe and secure, even as they were claiming otherwise in advertisements, marketing materials and sales pitches at auto dealerships. They continued to do this even after they knew about the defect. This resulted in people buying cars that they otherwise would not have purchased if they had all of the necessary information. Mazda left out a very important piece of information when selling the vehicle, and people who bought this car were unable to take precautions against possible negative effects because they didn’t know that this problem existed. In fact, only three categories of people knew that there was a problem with the locks: Thieves, police and Mazda executives and dealers.  This defect has resulted in class action lawsuits against Mazda.

What We Are Doing: Greenberg and Bederman is a law firm based in the Washington, D.C. area, and we are currently investigating compensation claims against Mazda on behalf of consumers who purchased these defective vehicles. We are offering legal assistance and we are filing class action lawsuits on behalf of those who had their cars broken into or stolen, and we are also offering assistance to consumers who were not told about the lock defect when they purchased the car. If you or a loved one is a current or former owner of a Mazda 3 between the model years of 2004 to 2007, please contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

 
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Yaz Birth Control Pill Lawsuits in Canada

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

Damage from Yaz birth control pills is International

At Greenberg and Bederman, we have been keeping a close eye on developments regarding Bayer’s line of Yaz birth control pills.  For those of you who have not been informed, birth control pills that have been marketed under the names of Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella have been linked to serious health complications among the women who use them.

Since Yaz and Yasmin have been on the market, there have been thousands of incidents of strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease among otherwise perfectly healthy women who have been using these pills.

What appears to be the cause of these medical complications is that when Bayer developed these pills, they chose to use as an ingredient a synthetic variation of progestin called drospirenone. This ingredient has been shown to increase the potassium levels in the bloodstreams of those who use it. When potassium levels increase substantially, this can cause blood clots to develop in the main arteries and veins in the legs. This condition is called “deep vein thrombosis.” While the clots themselves are relatively harmless, complications develop when these clots break apart and start to travel through the bloodstream. When these bits of blood clot get to the lungs, the heart or the brain, the end result can be a pulmonary embolism, a heart attack or a stroke.

 

The FDA is currently investigating these pills, which unfortunately is a process that can take months. In the meantime, there have been a slew of lawsuits filed against Bayer all over the United States, so much so to the point that many of them have been consolidated under what is called “multi-district litigation.” To understand multi-district litigation please read our article on Understanding Yaz Class Action Lawsuits. This is when tort cases that are similar in nature are essentially placed under the same ground rules in terms of evidence and witness testimony.

The premise of many of the yaz lawsuits is that not only did Bayer release and aggressively market a drug that is hazardous to women who use it, but that they did so while knowing that the use of dropserinone made it more dangerous than other birth control pills on the market. Many lawsuits are also alleging that Bayer used misleading marketing to increase sales, implying in their advertisements that Yaz could clear up all forms of acne or help women get past the negative emotional experiences of PMS.

And it isn’t just in the United States that these lawsuits are taking place. Our neighbors to the north are experiencing the same problems with Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella. There were 2 million prescriptions of Yaz and Yasmin in Canada in 2009.

In an article on CTV Edmonton, some women who have been taking these birth control pills are experiencing similar if not identical problems. One woman from Nova Scotia experienced a racing heart beat and dizziness after only taking Yaz for a short period of time. After being told by her doctors that she was essentially fine, she suffered what is called a transient ischemic attack, or a “mini stroke.” It left her paralyzed on the left side of her body and she was unable to communicate with anyone for an extended period of time.

Another woman from Halifax switched from Yasmin to Yaz due to some initial discomfort, but after 18 months on the pill she began to experience severe abdominal pains. Upon being examined by doctors, they determined that she had severe gallstones and that her gall bladder would have to be removed. The use of Yaz and gall bladder problems are not unrelated either.

 Bayer is steadfastly denying that they acted inappropriately or even that there is anything wrong with its Yaz birth control pills:

Bayer contends its oral contraceptives "have been and continue to be extensively studied worldwide and are safe and effective when used according to the product labeling."

"Bayer reaffirms and stands behind the safety of its drospirenone-containing oral contraceptives," the company said in a response to CTV News.

As for the lawsuits, Bayer said it is "in the process of gathering information on these cases, but the complaints we have reviewed so far pertain to side effects that are warned about in the labeling of all oral contraceptives, including ours. Bayer will defend itself vigorously against these lawsuits."

The judicial process in Canada is somewhat different from ours, but what we do have in common is that the Canadian courts recognize the rights of citizens to seek damages from those who are responsible for their injuries. We believe that Bayer released and aggressively marketed a pill that is dangerous to women, and that they did so with the knowledge of the risks. As a result of this, women who have been injured or hospitalized due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella are entitled to compensation for their medical bills, pain and suffering and lost income.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. based injury law firm, and we are currently offering legal assistance to women who have been injured due to the use of Bayer’s line of birth control pills. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. has been hospitalized due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

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Yaz Birth Control Injury Differences

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

DC Area Yaz Birth Control Injury Law Firm Greenberg and Bederman is Currently Offering Legal Assistance

As many of you probably know, the Bayer Corporation is facing a series of yaz lawsuits in various American states due to problems that users of their line of birth control pills are experiencing. If you don't know about yaz health problems, please read our page on yaz history.The difference between Bayer’s pills and most other oral contraceptives on the market is that Bayer’s birth control pills (which are marketed under the names Yaz, Yasmin, and a generic version called Ocella) all contain a synthetic variation of progestin called drispirenone. While the use of drispirenone has been marketed by Bayer as having some beneficial peripheral effects such as prevention of minor acne or helping to alleviate the symptoms of pre menstrual dysphoric disorder, Bayer failed to mention in either it’s marketing campaign or the warning labels used on the medication that drispirenone raises the risk of deep vein thrombosis, or blood clots in the deep arteries and veins of the legs. These blood clots can then break apart, and the pieces can travel through the bloodstream, which can cause strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms. The use of drispirenone has also lead to a higher than normal rate of gall bladder disease.

These side effects of yaz are not merely theoretical. There have been hundreds of women who have been seriously injured and hospitalized all over the country due to clot-based injuries. Otherwise perfectly healthy women have suffered from strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease, and there have even been more than fifty deaths.

 

As a result of these injuries and deaths, over 1100 lawsuits have been filed nationwide, with many of them falling under Multi District Litigation, which is a way to place cases with similar backgrounds against the same defendant under the same ground rules. A few class action suits (in which one group of attorneys represents multiple plaintiffs under the heading of one case) have also been filed.

Bayer has, of course, vowed to fight any and all yaz lawsuits regarding their line of birth control pills, and we certainly believe them. With profits of Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella reaching $1.7 billion dollars in 2009, Bayer can afford to wage as many court battles as they see fit. Even with all the justified bad publicity, Yaz is still Bayer’s top selling product.

The Bayer Corporation has already given some clues as to what they expect their defense to be. They recently made an attempt to allow past birth control history of the plaintiff’s to be used as evidence, which was quite rightly denied. And based on public statements by Bayer, we are expecting them to center their defenses on the warning label that is currently in place on the products themselves.

Bayer will probably wear the current label as a shield against any liability, with the premise being “Look, we have a warning label on the box, and the doctors who prescribe it have their warnings as well. If you didn’t read it, we can hardly be expected to be blamed for that.”

There are a few things wrong with that premise. In the first place, the warnings weren’t mentioned very prominently in the enormous and splashy advertising campaign that Bayer used for Yaz. The focus on these ads was all about what Yaz could do for you besides keep you from getting pregnant. In the second place, while the warning on the doctor’s labels does admit that there is a risk of hyperlykemia (elevated potassium levels,) it fails to mention that drispirenone has a higher risk of causing hyperlykemia than any other progestin based oral contraceptive on the market. Since hyperlykemia is a possibility with most other pills, this warning label basically makes it seem as if Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella are no different than any other pill on the market when it comes to risk, and this is simply not true.

An equivalent here would be if a gun manufacturer was selling a pistol that has a higher tendency to fire accidentally than any other gun on the market, but since there is a slight chance that many guns on the market will fire accidentally, their particular gun is no different than the others.

When you study the injuries associated with yaz Bayer’s warning labels should produce a list of conditions that should discourage you from taking any of their drispirenone based pills:

Yaz should not be used in women who have the following:

·         Renal insufficiency

·         Hepatic dysfunction

·         Adrenal Insufficiency

·         Thrombophlebitis or thromboembolic disorders

·         A past history of deep-vein thrombophlebitis or thromboembolic disorders

·         Cerebral-vascular or coronary-artery disease (current or history)

·         Valvular heart disease with thrombogenic complications

·         Severe hypertension

·         Diabetes with vascular involvement

·         Headaches with focal neurological symptoms

·         Major surgery with prolonged immobilization

·         Known or suspected carcinoma of the breast

·         Carcinoma of the endometrium or other known or suspected estrogen-dependent neoplasia

·         Undiagnosed abnormal genital bleeding

·         Cholestatic jaundice of pregnancy or jaundice with prior Pill use

·         Known or suspected pregnancy

·         Liver tumor (benign or malignant) or active liver disease

·         Heavy smoking (≥ 15 cigarettes per day) and over age 35

·         Hypersensitivity to any component of this product

This is all well and good, but that doesn’t explain the hundreds of women who are suffering from none of these symptoms who are still being injured and hospitalized. And aside from that obvious red flag, these symptoms all more or less appear as disqualifications on the warnings for practically every other birth control pill out there. This again makes it appear that Bayer’s line of birth control pills are just the same as every other oral contraceptive, when they are in fact not, and that is one of the major reasons for all of these yaz lawsuits.

The “read the warning label” argument doesn’t carry any water unless that warning label clearly states that drispirenone increases your chances of hyperlykemia, which increase your chances of DVT, which increases your chances of heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease. The increased chances aren’t mentioned in a clear manner at all. Bayer did not say “Here is a birth control pill that can prevent acne and the symptoms of PMDD, but it increases the odds that you will suffer from blood clots. Take it at your own risk.” They simply said “Here is a standard, run of the mill birth control pill, except it can prevent acne and the symptoms of PMDD!”

Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering legal assistance for people in the Washington D.C. area who have been injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella. Our attorneys are working diligently to help women in Virginia, Maryland and the District who have been hospitalized due to Bayer’s line of birth control pills. If you or a loved one has been injured in this manner, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free yaz legal consultation today.

To learn more about yaz birth control, please read our yaz lawyers website page, or watch our yaz video on Youtube.

 
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Yaz Lawsuits Filed in Indianapolis

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

Women in Indianapolis Latest to File Yaz Lawsuits

According to the Star Press, over fifty women have filed yaz lawsuits against the Bayer Corporation due to injuries that these women received due to the use of Bayer’s line of birth control pills.

According to the British Medical Journal Study of the women who take Yaz, Yasmin, or Oscella, 6% will experience dangerous adverse reactions ranging from blood clots, to DVT, to Gallbladder injury. Other birth control products have adverse reactions in about 1 % of patients who take birth control pills.

Bear in mind, we certainly don’t think that it’s “normal” for birth control pills to be dangerous to women. But considering that Bayer had no problem with producing, releasing and aggressively marketing a pill with an ingredient that they knew to be more dangerous than other forms of oral contraceptives, we have to assume that they think a five percent casualty rate for their products is “normal.”

The ingredient in question is a synthetic variation of one of the two main ingredients found in almost every birth control pill on the market. Most pills contain a combination of progesterone and estrogen, which essentially fools the female body into thinking that it is already pregnant. In order to separate themselves from the pack, Bayer decided to use a synthetically produced variation of progesterone called drospirenone. With this ingredient firmly in place, Bayer began to trumpet the additional peripheral benefits of what their line of pills could supposedly do. Aside from helping to prevent pregnancy, Bayer claimed that Yaz and Yasmin both helped to prevent serious forms of acne and Pre Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD.) They combined these claims with an expensive and flashy advertising campaign that was aimed at younger women. After all, what young woman wouldn’t want to avoid acne? What young woman wouldn’t wantto avoid the emotional instability that often comes with menstruation?

 

As predicted, Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella became Bayer’s top selling products. And this is exactly why the casualty rate is so high. It turns out that drospirenone does other things besides acne and PMDD prevention. It also dramatically raises the potassium levels in the bloodstreams of the women who use it. This condition (called hyperkalimia) does not lead to positive health benefits. High potassium levels in the bloodstream can and do lead to blood clots in the arteries or veins in the legs, which is called deep vein thrombosis. These clots then break apart and the pieces start to travel through the bloodstream, where they then block the regular flow of blood. This leads to pulmonary embolisms, strokes and heart attacks. This is not to mention gall bladder disease, which has also been linked to Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.

As of right now, Bayer’s public defense has been presented in two ways. The first is to say that since they have a warning label on the box, and since they mentioned the possible side effects on both the warning labels and the commercials, then it couldn’t possibly be their fault if nobody read it. The second public defense is to release statements that say things like, “When taken properly, Yaz or Yasmin are effective and safe birth control pills,” which implies that it is somehow the fault of the person who was taking the drug rather than the drug manufacturers themselves.

We find a great deal wrong with both of these methods of defense. In the first place, considering that the only way you can get birth control pills in this country is through a prescription from a doctor, most patients are already assuming that the pills are safe. If your doctor prescribes you a medication, wouldn’t you assume without thinking about it that it won’t be harmful to your health? With that being the case, we have to make the assumption that Bayer did not tell the medical community everything that it needed to know.

Secondly, how can you possibly blame the patient for any illnesses or adverse medical conditions that develop? Birth control pills are relatively easy to deal with. It’s one pill a day. We find it hard to believe that any of the women who have been taking these pills have somehow stumbled across a magic formula to make an otherwise benign working birth control pill deadly.

If Bayer had come right out and said “This pill contains an ingredient that increases the likelihood of deep vein thrombosis, strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease,” then it could be said that their bases were covered. But they did not. They did not say such things on the labeling, they did not say such things in their multi-million dollar advertising campaign, and they certainly aren’t admitting it now that the casualty numbers are starting to come in.

The women filing the yaz lawsuit in Indianapolis are only a fraction of the number of women all over the world who have suffered real and provable damage from the use of these birth control pills. Women who, in good faith, took birth control pills that were dangerous to their health, and these women were hospitalized with painful or even fatal injuries.

Here in the Washington, D.C. area, Greenberg and Bederman has been leading the way in both informing women of the dangers of Bayer’s line of birth control pills and providing legal assistance for women who have been harmed by using these pills. We are currently representing several women who have been injured and hospitalized due to Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.

If you or a loved one has been similarly injured, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free yaz legal consultation today.

To learn more about our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, please read about Andy Bederman, or watch his yaz video onYoutube.
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