Before becoming LegalReader's Editor-in-Chief, Jay W. Belle Isle worked as a freelance copywriter with clients on four continents. Jay has a degree in Business Administration from Cleary University and a Juris Doctor from Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Jay has also worked as a contracts administrator for a DOD contractor specializing in vehicle armor.
We should thank Martin Shkreli, the man who bought the only drug to treat toxoplasmosis and promptly raised the price through the roof. Why should we thank him? Due to his outrageous, cavalier attitude toward the issue and his failure to hire a PR firm to do the talking, he put Big Pharma and its ridiculous pricing policies under a huge spotlight.
Berkeley’s cellphone ordinance requiring sellers to tell consumers that keeping their phones too close to their bodies could expose them to dangerous radio-frequency radiation was upheld by a federal judge. The only part that didn’t pass must is a line stating that the risk is even greater for children, which has yet to be proven.
Kim Davis is confused. She can’t understand why equality is important to same-sex couples. She also altered state documents without authorization and potentially invalidated marriage licenses issued under the new format. This could put the subsequent marriages in legal jeopardy.
Kathleen Kane, the Pennsylvania Attorney General, temporarily lost her license to practice law by order of the State Supreme Court. Kane is facing criminal charges for allegedly leaking confidential grand jury information to the press. Kane discovered sexually explicit and otherwise offensive emails between the Court and former state prosecutors and exposed the culture of racism and misogyny earlier this year. The good ol’ boys club has been after her ever since.
Adventist Health System, a Florida-based healthcare company, has agreed to pay a $118.7M settlement to the federal government and four involved states over a whistleblower suit alleging an intricate system of kickbacks to doctors for referring patients. Adventist was allegedly offering doctors bonuses, inflated salaries and permission to overbill in exchange for patient referrals.
In what turns out to be one of the largest – and grossest – settlements for bedbugs in a hotel in the state of Maryland, Stacey Belle just got $100K! She stayed one night at the Red Roof Inn at Prince George’s County. She awoke the next morning with itchy welts all over her hand and arms. Upon looking under her pillow, she discovered a swarm of visibly crawling bedbugs.
A UK man got a big surprise when his joke backfired and he ended up in hospital. Daniel Medforth though it would be funny to take 35 Viagra pills at the same time. Boy, was he ever wrong. He got quite sick and ended up hospitalized for five days. All the while, “Little Daniel” had the worst case of penis insomnia on record, being “up” for the whole time. That’s right, Medforth had to contend with a never-ending supply of erections.
There is a new FDA committee on its way. The agency announced last week that it is forming the first-ever FDA Patient Advisory Committee on Medical Devices. The FDA hopes to get real patient input in the development, approval and monitoring processes it uses for medical devices.
The FDA issued its most serious level of recall, a Class I, on SynCardia Systems Total Artificial Heart Freedom Driver due to a potentially deadly defect.Part of the driver may fail, causing the artificial heart to stop pumping blood. This can result in serious injuries, up to and including death, if the patient is not immediately connected to a new driver.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has joined Tristan Broussard’s suit against his former employer, First Tower Loan, LLC. First Tower forced Mr. Broussard to choose between living openly as a transgendered man or having a job because Mr. Broussard’s driver’s license still listed him as female. Mr. Broussard excelled at his duties and surpassed his employer’s expectations, but the bigots could not get past their transphobia.