The Kickham Comment - Boston Accident Lawyer Blog

Energy drinks seem to be on the shelves everywhere in the past few years. I’ve always looked at these products with great skepticism – not about their ability to turn the average person into someone who has just stuck his finger into an electrical outlet – but skeptical as to their safety. I always felt they were medically dangerous – and recent news events appear to support that idea.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people use these drinks. It’s not hard to imagine this common scenario: You’ve been up all night working on an important project, and got just an hour or two of sleep. And it gets worse – you need to get up early to go to work. You feel terrible. You have the entire day ahead of you. And breakfast with a huge cup of coffee just won’t do it for you. You’re exhausted. The “solution”? You down an energy drink, trusting and hoping that its large jolt of caffeine will stimulate you enough to get you through the day. It doesn’t occur to you that it might be medically unsafe. Unfortunately, what you don’t know can literally kill you. That’s right. Some so-called energy drinks –such as Monster Energy – can allegedly be fatal if you drink them.

In fact, one family is now suing Monster Energy Products, after their 14-year-old daughter died soon after consuming Monster Energy caffeinated drinks. After the death, the parents of 14-year-old Anais Fournier filed their lawsuit. They are saying that Monster Energy’s caffeinated drinks killed their daughter. Apparently, Miss Fournier drank two 24-oz. Monster Energy drinks within 24 hours. Her death, according to her autopsy, was attributed to cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity. This is upsetting news and as a Massachusetts unsafe products lawyer, I’m always saddened to hear about manufacturers who create products that allegedly harm people.

Four days ago, I reported on what was news to very few people at that point in time: That a Massachusetts pharmaceutical compounding facility, the New England Compounding Center, had unknowingly distributed thousands of vials of a fungally-infected steroid commonly used to treat back and spine injuries.

Since then, the outbreak has continued to spread. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) now reports that75 medical facilities in 23 states received the contaminated steroid injections from NECC. The NECC manufactures a variety of specialty pharmaceutical products that it distributes to medical facilities around the country. Tennessee has seen the most deaths related to this defective product (six so far,) as well as the most infections (39.) In addition to the most recent death in Florida (in Marion County, where six non-fatal infections have also been reported,) deaths have been reported in Maryland, Michigan and Virginia. Confirmed cases of the disease in have occurred in Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Ohio. Other states that received the contaminated drug are California, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia.

Meningitis is a horrific, often fatal disease that causes swelling of the protective membranes of the spinal cord and the brain. It is typically caused by an infection, frequently by bacteria or a virus, but it can also be caused by less common pathogens such as fungi. Fungal meningitis is very rare and, unlike viral and bacterial meningitis, it is not contagious. Click here to learn more about it.

Imagine this: You get out of a bed one day, with a sore back. You’re in a lot of pain, so you go to see your doctor to assess the problem and help you deal with your pain. He gives you some exercises to perform, and recommends Ibuprofen. And, oh yes, he suggests that he give you a steroid injection in your back to counteract your back pain. Sounds good to you, so you agree.

The next thing you know, you have contracted meningitis, an extremely serious and perhaps fatal inflammation of the lining of the spinal cord and brain.

Unfortunately, the above scenario is no nightmare, but a reality. In the past several days, a multi-state outbreak of fungal meningitis has been traced to a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility located here in our backyard, in Framingham, Massachusetts: The New England Compounding Center. The company is a compounding pharmacy, which means it custom-mixes medications for medical and commercial distribution. As of this posting, this bacterial meningitis outbreak spans nine states and has resulted in the deaths of at least seven people. States that have reported cases include Indiana, Florida, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. As the outbreak has spread over the past few days, the New England Compounding Center has recalled not only the particular steroid linked to this outbreak, but all of its current products. Simultaneously, health officials have been working overtime to notify anyone who may have been injected with the drug.

Here’s a scenario that could easily happen to you. You and your significant other go out to dinner some evening, all set for a romantic rendezvous. Everything’s great. Dinner is excellent. The company is marvelous. And the wine is award-winning.

Except that when you get back home — or maybe even on your way home — you start to fell terribly ill or perhaps begin to vomit uncontrollably. This actually happened to my poor wife many years ago, after consuming some tainted melon at a restaurant. The melon had gone bad, causing my wife to get sick in public, on a street in Brookline at 11 o’clock in the evening. Afterward, she was unable to go to work for two days.

Has this ever happened to you?

My wife loves to eat Nutella. She’s constantly on a diet, but every Saturday night she takes half a low-calorie English muffin, toasts it, and smears it with the chocolate-hazelnut spread. A constant dieter, she indulges in this once-a-week treat with a rapture reminiscent of a shipwreck survivor who hasn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks. But Debbi knows all too well that she can’t eat this product every day and still maintain her 112-pound weight. Just two tablespoons of Nutella have 200 calories, 100 of which are fat calories. And the list of ingredients includes sugar and palm oil as its first two ingredients – and these are certainly not the healthiest choices for anyone. Interestingly, the jar of Nutella claims that a nutritious breakfast is made of up a glass of OJ, and Nutella smeared on whole-wheat bread. Debbi would be the first to tell you that if you start eating this every day for breakfast, you’ll wind up in Fat City — despite your goals to be on the road to Sveltesville.

The legal system has also agreed that Nutella isn’t that healthy. Having it marketed increasingly as a balanced breakfast for American children has gotten its manufacturer, Italy’s Ferrero Group (which also makes Ferrero Chocolates and Tic Tacs), into trouble with US courts.

Advertised as a way to get children to eat a healthy breakfast, Ferrero insinuated that Nutella was healthy when, in fact, it has about as much nutritional value as a candy bar. Or so claimed several consumers – mothers — who sued the company’s US unit. As part of its settlement of two class-action suits, Ferrero U.S.A. Inc. has reimbursed consumers for up to five jars (at $4 a jar). In addition, Ferrero agreed to modify the Nutella label, modify certain marketing statements about Nutella, create new television ads, and change the Nutella website.

Here are two words every consumer needs to remember: product liability. What does this term mean? It means that if you are injured or harmed by using a particular product – be it a defective swimming pool slide, a defectively manufactured car, or a certain kind of food that might have dangerous particles in it — you have the right to sue the manufacturer for product liability. “Product liability” is a legal term, and it’s used interchangeably with “defective products.” Here’s a recent development in Massachusetts in this area of practice:

A Fall River, Massachusetts food manufacturer has recalled 4,000 pounds of soup because consumers apparently found pieces of plastic in various cans of soup. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that soup products that were made by Blount Fine Foods, and which were sold at Wegmans supermarkets in Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, were being recalled for safety reasons.

The following products, which all carried the Wegmans Food Markets private label, are being recalled: