Author: Ring of Fire Staff

By Bill Cash September 17th, 2012  9:25am Last week, on behalf of several patients injured by generic versions of the drug Fosamax, Levin Papantonio lawyers Brandon Bogle and Bill Cash filed a brief arguing that generic drug companies should be responsible for the damage caused by their drugs.  The issue is currently pending before the United States Court of Appeals at Philadelphia, and that court will soon decide whether the patients have the right to bring a case.  The case is called Welch v. Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. Fosamax, a drug in the bisphosphonate class of drugs, is designed to reverse the effects of osteoporosis and build healthier bone in the human body.  But the drug has been associated with potentially crippling side effects stemming from the way the drug works.  In some patients, the drug actually leads to the formation of more dense, brittle bone that leaves patients vulnerable to damage and injury.  Some patients have developed a disabling disease known as “osteonecrosis of the jaw,” in which the jaw essentially rots away and has to be surgically removed and replaced with metal.  Other patients have developed what have been termed “atypical femur fractures” after long-term use of the drug. Generic versions of Fosamax came onto the market in 2008.  Last year, the Supreme Court held that federal law required the generic drug companies to use the...

By Erica Reed September 13th, 2012  7:36pm Story updated below with a transcript from Mike Papantonio’s interview with attorney James Kauffman on the whistleblower settlement, and why it should scare Mitt Romney. This week the Internal Revenue Service awarded Bradley Birkenfield $104 million; the largest whistleblower reward in history.  Birkenfield earned the reward by providing information to the IRS that led to UBS AG’s offshore banking practices bust. Birkenfield, a former Swiss banker, provided information of “exceptional depth and breadth” that led to the assessment of more than $5 billion in fines, back taxes, and penalty charges.  Birkenfield served two and-a-half years in prison for a fraud conspiracy conviction related to the case.  That charge landed the bank a $780 million fine as well as an agreement to surrender its list of clients that the IRS suspected of tax evasion.  The list included thousands of tax-cheats who had been suspected of using offshore accounts to hide assets. The Internal Revenue Service rewarded Birkenfield in connection with his participation through their Whistleblower program. The program, established by the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, may provide informants with between 15 and 30 percent of the total proceeds paid to the IRS that flow from the information provided.  The program only provides the reward where the amount identified is greater than $2 million or where an individual taxpayer is...