GM recalls Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS after fire reports

GM recalls 13,780 vehicles after fire reports; Chrysler recalls 16,000 Jeep Libertys
DETROIT -- General Motors Co. is recalling 13,780 Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS cars in the United States because of a flaw that can cause power-steering fluid to leak and ignite a fire in the engine.
Chrysler, meanwhile, said it plans to recall 16,000 Jeep Liberty SUVs to fix faulty windshield wiper systems, according to The Associated Press.
The company is targeting model year 2010 and 2011 Lucerne and DTS vehicles following reports of two fires related to electrical arcing triggered by leaking fluid coming into contact with the starter or alternator cable, according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Web site today.
No injuries were reported in the fires, Alan Adler, a spokesman for Detroit-based GM, said in an interview.
The automaker concluded the starter and alternator cables were incorrectly installed so they touch a power-steering line, it said in the letter to NHTSA, the U.S. auto-safety regulator.
GM will repair the cars, which are under warranty, free of charge to owners. The recall totals 14,245 cars worldwide, GM said in a statement on its Web site.
The company this year has recalled 1.53 million cars and trucks for a windshield-wiper flaw that may cause fires, and 303,100 Impala cars in the U.S. because seat belts in the front seat may not be properly anchored and may fail to restrain passengers in a crash.
Wiper problems
In the Chrysler recall, the automaker said the wiper problem involves certain 2008 Jeep Liberty SUVs, the AP said. Chrysler said water could get into the windshield wiper motor of the Jeeps and stop the wipers.
Chrysler said no crashes or injuries have been tied to the recalls, the AP reported.
Jeep dealers will replace the windshield wiper motor free of charge, according to the report, and the recall is expected to begin this month.

Ford Winstar Minivans Need to be Fixed

NHTSA: only fraction of recalled minivans repaired.
The AP (11/17) reported, "The government is urging owners of recalled Ford Motor Co. minivans to get their vehicles fixed." According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "only about 75,000 of the minivans had been fixed by the recall, leaving a large number of vehicles still to be repaired." Concerns "that the rear axles could corrode and potentially break" prompted the August recall of nearly 575,000Ford Windstar models.

Study Shows one in Seven Medicare Patients Harmed by Medical Error

Study: one in seven hospitalized Medicare patients harmed.
The New York Times (11/16, B3, Wilson) reports, "One of every seven Medicare beneficiaries who is hospitalized is harmed as a result of problems with the medical care there, according to a new study from the Office of Inspector General for" HHS, which also "said unexpected adverse events added at least $4.4 billion a year to government health costs and contributed to the deaths of about 180,000 patients a year." In response to the findings, "Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy, director of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, said the adverse events were affecting hospital patients at an 'alarming rate' and promised to work to improve it." And, "Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said it would aggressively pursue recommendations to broaden the definition of adverse events, monitor and prevent them."
USA Today (11/16, Rubin) reports, "The study is the first of its kind aimed at understanding 'adverse events' in hospitals -- essentially, any medical care that causes harm to a patient, according to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General." Notably, "patients in the study, a nationally representative sample that focused on 780 Medicare patients discharged from hospitals in October 2008, suffered such problems as bed sores, infections and excessive bleeding from blood-thinning drugs, the report found."

PRODUCTS LIABILITY – DEFECTIVE CHINESE MOTORCYCLE

Jaime D. Jackson recently settled a case against Keeway Motor America, Inc. involving their importation and sale in the United States of what Plaintiff alleged was a defective 250 cc Keeway Dorado motorcycle that had been manufactured by a Chinese manufacturer in China.

Plaintiff was driving her recently purchased Keeway Dorado motorcycle when the front end of the motorcycle began to wobble resulting in her exiting the roadway and crashing. After extensive investigation, it was learned that the upper and lower steering races in the steering assembly were missing some ball bearings in the steering races. This was an assembly defect that occurred at the manufacturing facility in China. The proper number of ball bearings in the steering races is critical to the safety and steering of the motorcycle.

Unfortunately, numerous plaintiffs, as was the case here, are unable to obtain proper jurisdiction over Chinese manufacturers in the United States, because China is not a party to the Hague Convention. However, in this litigation, we came up with creative theories of liability against the importer of the defective motorcycle including citing to regulations promulgated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that view the importer of motor vehicles (which include motorcycles) as the manufacturer of the product with an obligation to make sure that the product is free from defects and safe for its intended use before being sold in the United States.

It is unfair that injured Americans sometimes may not be able to sue a manufacturer of unsafe products because of arcane laws, however, with these new theories of liability and creative litigation strategies developed by Jaime Jackson other responsible entities such as importers and dealers can be held accountable for selling unsafe products and victims of these unsafe products can obtain justice and be properly compensated for the harm caused by these unsafe products.

Depuy Orthopedics ASR Hip Implant Recall

Depuy Orthopedics recently recalled 93,000 ASR hip implants. Finally, after they, stopped selling this hip implant in other countries outside the United States.

Seatbelt Load Limiters: A Dangerous Safety Defect

SEATBELT LOAD LIMITERS[1]
A load limiting device or torsion bar (hereinafter simply referred to as “load limiter”) were introduced originally by some manufacturers in the early eighties in conjunction with vehicles equipped with airbags. The theory or justification behind such devices are that they are intended to reduce belt induced injuries such as rib fractures by allowing forward movement of occupant’s torso when belt loads exceed some threshold. The release of the webbing allows an occupant to move forward until the occupant’s forward motion is finally arrested by the deployment of the frontal airbag. In theory, this design concept may work; if an occupant were to be involved in a 35 mph NCAP full frontal barrier crash test where the torsion bar releases webbing and the airbag deploys arresting the forward movement of the occupant. In virtually all other crash scenarios, i.e. rollover, offset frontals, frontal impacts where the airbag fails to deploy or any impact where airbags do not deploy, this design is extremely dangerous because it introduces slack into the seatbelt system; thereby failing to restrain the occupant and may permit the occupant to be ejected, or slam into the interior of the vehicle despite the fact that the occupant did exactly what they were supposed to in properly wearing their seatbelt.
In any crash scenario where an occupant was belted, but sustained significant injury, one place to look is whether or not the seatbelt retractor was equipped with a load limiting-type device. As mentioned, common scenarios include rollovers and offset frontal collisions where an occupant may miss the airbag because of the PDOF, or the airbag fails to deploy; since load limiters are designed to work in conjunction with an airbag.
[1] One of the original attempts at purported load limiting was sewing the seatbelt over itself or sewing a fold into the seatbelt webbing, more appropriately called rip stitching. The rip stitching would then pull apart when loaded introducing slack into the seatbelt system. Rip stitching, because it was such a dumb idea, for the most part went away and was replaced by a device referred to as a torsion bar built into the seatbelt retractor. The torsion bar is a metal rod that will twist when sufficient force is applied. The torsion bar will twist under load allowing seatbelt webbing to be released from the retractor thereby introducing slack into the system. The subject of this paper and presentation focuses on the deadly, deceitful and dangerous defect-torsion bars.

Toyota secretly bought cars to hide problems from public

Toyota secretly bought problem cars, lawsuit says
Toyota Motor Corp. secretly bought back from U.S. consumers vehicles it found with speed-control defects as part of a strategy to hide unintended-acceleration problems from safety regulators and the public, a revised lawsuit claims. The repurchase transactions included strict confidentiality agreements barring consumers from disclosing the problem to anyone and from suing the automaker, according to the amended class-action complaint.
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