Defective Products

A few years ago, the Internet was (briefly) afire with a debate over whether Johnson & Johnson’s promise of “No more tears” on its shampoo referred to the act of crying or the act of ripping something. Multiple websites scoured old commercials, paperwork, and ads to see which version was the true version. In the…

Bayer has agreed to pay $10 billion to settle thousands of cases alleging that the weed killer Roundup causes cancer. The Washington Post reports that Bayer “will allocate as much as $9.6 billion to resolve current Roundup litigation. The company said the pool will cover roughly 125,000 claims that allege the product leads to non-Hodgkin’s…

An appeals court in Missouri has ruled that Johnson & Johnson must pay $2.1 billion in damages to women who used the company’s talc products, and developed ovarian cancer. Per the New York Times, “the appellate court noted that the company’s internal memorandums from as far back as the 1960s indicated that its talcum products…

With the coronavirus pandemic, companies have sprung into action creating products they hope we’ll buy to make ourselves feel safe. Consumers are purchasing masks, gloves, face shields, and disinfectant products from companies they have never heard of before, as well as those they know and trust. But that trust, it turns out, may be misplaced.…

If you’ve seen the news over the last several months, then you’re very familiar with the issues surrounding the mysterious vaping-related illness that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has now officially named the disease EVALI. It stands for e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung…

Vaping was supposed to be the “next big thing” to help people quit smoking. Instead, vaping has spawned an entirely new, deadly illness all of its own. The new illness, now officially named EVALI, short for e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury, is causing states to place temporary bans on vaping and product sales…

Vaping devices have been advertised as a way to help smokers quit smoking and as a safer alternative to traditional tobacco. Of late, vaping has increasingly taken center stage for another reason. It turns out that vaping isn’t all it was cracked up to be. In addition to vaping liquid being just as addictive as…

In the 1920s, the federal government initiated a ban on alcohol during prohibition for, among other reasons, health concerns. Almost a full century later, vaping-related health hazards that continue to surface are creating a similar climate of fear with many local governments urging users of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) to quit use immediately. That…

Over the last few years, there have been countless news stories about lithium-ion batteries and the role they play in causing products to combust. Hoverboards, Samsung phones, laptops, and now e-cigarettes: all these explosions seem to come back to the batteries in the devices. It is not necessarily that all lithium-ion batteries are dangerous; we…