A medical malpractice claim was filed by an Indiana family who claims their daughter’s death was related to the use of Botox to treat muscle spasms.

Brandon and Jill Wells filed the personal injury lawsuit about two years after their 10-year-old daughter Audrey died. They are alleging that they were not properly informed by doctors that Botox can possibly cause breathing and muscle difficulties which can lead to death, according to the South Bend Tribune.

Audrey, who had cerebal palsy, stopped breathing a few days after she received a second dose of Botox, and died shortly thereafter.

The claim is similar similar to a recent wrongful death lawsuit filed in California by parents whose child, had cerebral palsy and died after going through Botox treatment. A jury recently found in favor of the defense in the California case, claiming the child’s cerebal palsy issues led to her death and not from use of the drug.

Botox is not recognized by the Federal Drug Administration as approved for use for muscle ailments, which is considered an “off label” practice. But some doctors tout the usefulness of Botox for treating contorted muscles, and that adverse effects overall have been few and far between, according to the Tribune.

Representatives from Allergan, Inc., the manufacturers of Botox, did not offer any comment on either cases.

Audrey was born healthy, but suffered brain damage while still in the hospital when she stopped breathing, and was later diagnosed with cerebal palsy. While unable to walk or speak, Audrey reacted to people’s voices and to affection.

The Wells were skeptical of any medical procedures performed on Audrey, since she had suffered from seizures earlier on. But when her hip started to become rigid, and was causing her pain, Botox was a treatment option suggested by doctors, according to the Tribune.

In fall 2007, Audrey received her first Botox shot, which seemed to help improve her hip flexibility. But shortly thereafter, her parents noticed she was eating less and was more lethargic than before.

Audrey’s next injection came in February 2008, and, just like before, she was having eating problems and was lethargic a few days later. She was rushed to a local emergency room after Audrey’s pediatrician noticed she was having breathing trouble. While en route, she stopped breathing and died before arrival.

Audrey’s death was listed as from pneumonia, but an autopsy was never performed, according to the Tribune.

Audrey’s family later became aware of FDA warnings about the possibility of harm when Botox is used for muscle treatment, and said they are pursuing this medical malpractice claim to warn other families who might use Botox for treatment.

“I don’t want this to happen to any other kids like Audrey,” Brandon Wells said. “I can’t even imagine how many kids right now are being shot up with poison and how many parents are oblivious.”

A wrongful death lawsuit filed against a wheel chair manufacturing company alleges that a malfunctioning wheel chair led to the death of a prominent disability activist.

The lawsuit, filed in Boston by the parents of quadriplegic Jeffrey Thompson, requested $10 million in damages from National Seating & Mobility Inc. The personal injury lawsuit claims that during a routine repair Thompson’s wheel chair malfunctioned, pinned his legs under a table which caused life-threatening seizures, the Associated Press reported.

Thompson’s family refused a $1 million settlement offered by the company.

“He was just such a fine young man who had recovered from a major injury, being a quadriplegic, and had developed into someone who was very special,” Charles Thompson about 29-year-old Jeffrey. “He laughed and smiled every day.”

The suit claims that technicians working on the motorized wheel chair were inadequately trained to handle the repair, and claims the workers should have removed Jeffrey from the chair and disconnected the chair’s battery before fixing the chair.

Spokespeople for National Seating and Mobility, Inc. declined to comment on the pending court case.

Jeffrey Thompson was at his parents’ house with two Boston-area repair technicians working for the wheel chair manufacturer on Dec. 10, 2007. The repairs were to be made on electrical wiring in the chair, according to AP.

While the men were working on the chair, it suddenly lifted, causing Thompson’s legs to be pinned under the table he was sitting at. Thompson’s leg was broken in the accident and then he began suffering from uncontrollable seizures afterward, the AP reported.

Thompson died one day after the accident in a nearby hospital.

The Thompson family’s personal injury attorney, Jonathon Friedmann, said there is no reason why the chair should have shorted out during the repairs, and there is also no reason why the battery should have remained within the chair while it was worked on.

“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be here today,” Friedmann said.

Charles Thompson told AP that when repairs were made on the chair before Jeffrey died, the technician always removed him from the chair first and placed him in another before starting to work. Thompson also said that was the first time those two men had visited their home and worked on Jeffrey’s chair.

Jeffrey Thompson was 17 when he suffered a spinal injury while in a car accident while a friend was driving. He went on to graduate from college and was a vocal advocate for increased disabled access to Boston-area public transit.

A wrongful death lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Georgia claiming an undercover drug officer who shot and killed a minister in September was not legally certified as a police officer at the time.

Abigail Ayers, widow of Rev. Jonathan Ayers, filed the wrongful death lawsuit that also goes on to claim that Stephens County Sheriff’s Deputy Billy Shane Harrison was not trained properly to use firearms by the sheriff’s office. The suit also alleges that Harrison’s supervisor should have been aware of his lack of certification and not included him in the arrest that ended in Rev. Ayers’ death.

Allegations in the suit that Harrison and another deputy, Chance Oxner, engaged in criminal activity run parallel with findings in the police investigation into Ayers’ death, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The suit also points a finger at Stephens County Sheriff Randy Shirley and Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell, the two supervisors who put Harrison and Oxner on the Mountain Judicial Circuit Narcotics Criminal Investigation and Suppression Team, a drug task force. The lawsuit claims the two sheriffs ignored problems observed in Harrison and Oxner and let them on the task force regardless of the issues.

Attorneys representing the defendants denied all of the accusations in the lawsuit. Harrison’s attorney Gus McDonald said all accusations of Harrison not being certified to fire a gun are false, and that Harrison has achieved several certifications in his career.

Rev. Jonathon Ayers, 28, accidentally stepped into the middle of an undercover police operation when he was found with a suspected drug dealer and an admitted prostitute on Sept. 1, 2009, according to the Journal Constitution. Officers were just about to move in and arrest the woman after a drug deal, and in the process they saw her getting out of Ayers’ vehicle near a hotel.

Officers confronted Ayers at a nearby gas station and tried to block Ayers’ vehicle, and identified themselves as officers, but he still tried to evade them, according to the Constitution. Harrison said he shot at Ayers because he thought Oxner was possibly killed by Ayers and he might be next.

Ayers kept driving, though he was wounded, until he crashed his vehicle in a nearby utility pole. He died later at a hospital.

The personal injury lawsuit Harrison, Oxner and their immediate supervisor Kyle Brant of wrongful death, assault and battery. The suit also claims that the two sheriffs fell short of their responsibilities and that Shirley and Harrison both acted with negligence.

Toyota may be facing even more legal problems stemming from their recent recalls, but these aren’t because of sticky gas pedals.

Several groups of vehicle owners are now filing class action lawsuits against the Japanese auto maker, alleging that all of the personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits that have been filed against the company are lowering resale values of their Toyotas.

The class action suits alone could cost the beleaguered car company $3 billion and possibly more, according to a study by the Associated Press.

Possible payouts and court-ruled damage costs for wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits filed against Toyota could still cost the company millions alongside the class action suits.

There are at least 6 million car owners claiming their vehicles have lost value, and while such claims may have lower individual payouts than the injury cases, the sheer volume of them could cost the automaker billions.

University of Pennsylvania law professor Tom Baker described the possibility of so many class action suits as more damaging than cases when a person was actually injured or killed.

“A super-big injury case would be $20 million,” Baker told the AP. “But you could have millions of individual car owners who could (each) be owed $1,000. If I were Toyota, I’d be more worried about those cases.”

The crux of the class action suits claim the automaker knew about car safety problems and concealed that knowledge from the public. Kelley Blue Book made a recent decision to lower the resale value of recalled Toyotas an average 3.5 percent.

An upcoming court hearing in San Diego could have a dramatic effect on the various lawsuits filed against Toyota since the company began recalling automobiles for gas pedal problems.

A panel of judges will decide whether all of the different lawsuits can be consolidated into one legal action, and whether all the claims have enough merit to move forward in court.

According to the AP, about 8 million vehicles worldwide have been recalled by Toyota since fall 2009. At least 52 people have died in crashes that appear to have stemmed from the accelerator issues that led to the sweeping recalls.

The $3 billion figure mainly stems from the estimate made by Northeastern University law professor Tim Howard, who is serving as a leading attorney in the class-action cases. If each of the 6 million car owners who claim a drop in value are paid roughly $500 each by Toyota, the total figure would be about $3 billion.

The United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a landmark case that will decide whether people can file personal injury lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies if vaccines are found to be the cause of health problems.

The case of Hannah Bruesewitz, who started having seizures after a series of vaccines, could set a sweeping precedent over an ongoing debate within the U.S. about the risks and benefits of vaccines.

The Supreme Court will decide if it is legal for consumers to sue vaccine producers outside of a special forum set specifically to protect drug makers from this type of lawsuit. The court will also take into account matters of liability and if drug makers are producing the safest possible vaccines.

In 1986 Congress established a special “forum,” nicknamed The Vaccine Court, to allow pharmaceutical companies to steadily release vaccines with fewer concerns about lawsuits of the kind the Bruesewitzes filed against Wyeth Laboratories, reports CNN.

Hannah Bruesewitz was born in 1992 outside Philadelphia. She was described as healthy by her parents until she was given DPT shots as an infant. The shots combine vaccines for diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus. After the shots, the Bruesewitzes found Hannah started having seizures and is now developmentally disabled.

The lawsuit claims Wyeth Laboratories, the producer of the DPT vaccines and now a part of Pfizer, did not make the potential health dangers caused by the vaccines clear enough for parents to make an educated decision about immunizing their children.

While the family’s initial claim was rejected by the “Vaccine Court,” the Bruesewitzes sought an audience with federal courts, under the justification that the side effects that Hannah experienced could have been avoided with better drug production, according to CNN.

But a federal court ruled in favor Wyeth, under the ruling that any design defects in the vaccines given to Hannah were still protected under the 1986 law that established the “Vaccine Court.” Wyeth actually urged the Supreme Court to hear the case despite their victory in the appeals court.

Drug manufacturers, including Wyeth, have contended before that vaccines are not profitable, so the legal protection from suits allows them to make them readily available to people without excessive threats to their bottom line. The companies also said instances where side effects caused harm are few.

“After exhausting administrative remedies in the vaccine program, children in Georgia who are injured by vaccines may bring design defect claims against vaccine manufacturers when the use of safer alternative vaccines could have avoided their injuries,” the Supreme Court wrote to explain why they will hear the case.

“By contrast, Hannah Bruesewitz and children like her … may be precluded from pursuing identical design defect claims even when the same safer alternative vaccines could have avoided their suffering too,” the Supreme Court wrote.

A California man, who had a heart attack after being hit by a Taser stun gun and is now disabled, filed a personal injury lawsuit against the weapon maker.

The lawsuit alleges that Taser International, manufacturers of the controversial “non-lethal” police weapon, had past knowledge that voltage from the Taser could cause permanent harm to a person, specifically when the weapon is fired directly at a person’s chest as in the case of Steven Butler.

Butler, a resident of Watsonville, Calif., admitted to CNN that he was drunk and acting out on the night of October 7, 2006. Butler was on a city bus and refused to step out of the vehicle, even after area police officers ordered him to do so. According to CNN, the police officer then used a Taser three times on Butler.

Doctors later reported that while Butler was shocked, he went into cardiac arrest. Emergency medical technicians nearby were able to bring him back to life, but he was still left with permanent impairments such as loss of short and long term memory. Butler’s attorneys have claimed that while he was in cardiac arrest, Butler was deprived of oxygen for at least 18 minutes as a result of the Taser injury.

John Burton, who is representing Butler and his family in the injury lawsuit, told CNN he can prove that tasers can cause heart attacks if fired near a person’s chest, and that Taser International knew about this before October 2006.

“We suspect they had all the necessary data since 2005, since they were funding the study,” Burton told CNN about whether Taser International knew if their weapons could cause harm.

In early 2006, the American College of Cardiology Foundation published a study that was funded by Taser International to see what effects the weapons had on hearts. The testing was performed on pigs, according to CNN.

Within the published piece, authors said it wasn’t likely that Tasers could cause a heart attack, but they did recommend that the darts should not be fired near the heart to avoid the possibility altogether.

The shock coming from darts connected to wires that lead from the handheld Taser mechanism can drastically spike a person’s heart rate, CNN reported. An average resting heart rate is between 60 and 80 beats per minute but a Taser shock can spike a heart rate to as high as 220 beats per minute.

Dr. Douglas Zipes, an Indianapolis-based cardiologist, is scheduled to testify against Taser International.

“I think Taser has been disingenuous and certainly up to 2006 — the case we are talking about — Taser said in their educational materials that there was no cardiac risk whatsoever, that Taser could not produce a heart problem, that there was no long lasting effect from Taser,” Zipes told CNN.

A Chicago man who filed a personal injury lawsuit 18 years ago against the city’s board of education after he was severely hurt while jumping off a trampoline received a record-breaking settlement from the city.

Ryan Murray, 30, was offered a $14.7 million settlement last week to dismiss his lawsuit against both the Chicago Board of Education and a private youth center. Murray has been a quadriplegic since age 13 when he was injured doing tumbling stunts at what was then Bryn Mawr Elementary School, near Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood.

During an extracurricular activity held at Murray’s school, Murray attempted to do a flip off of a mini-trampoline onto a mat. While attempting the stunt, he struck his head and broke his neck, according to the Chicago Tribune. Murray has been paralyzed from the neck down ever since.

The trampoline itself was property of Chicago Public Schools and the class was supervised by a staff member with a private group called the Chicago Youth Centers, the Tribune reported. This settlement is considered by attorneys involved to be the largest payment offered by the city’s Board of Education for such a case.

“He’s relieved,” Attorney Susan Schwartz said to the Chicago Sun Times. “He knows that he will be cared for in the future. If something happens to his mother, he will have the resources to hire someone to take care of him.”

Schwartz, who has represented Murray since the suit was initially filed in 1992, said he needs 24 hour care for his various needs. Before going to her job selling insurance, Murray’s mother takes care of his son in the early morning, waking up at 4 a.m. every day, Schwartz said.

Murray’s attorneys have also been quoted saying that the staff member supervising the tumbling class was not adequately trained for such a responsibility, the Sun Times reported. Lawyers for the board were quoted saying that the board opted to pay the personal injury settlement because other personal injury verdicts in favor of plaintiffs have yielded even higher payouts than what was offered to Murray.

The case had bounced back and forth between various Illinois courts for over a decade and a half, before it came in front of the Illinois Supreme Court in 2006. The court originally ruled that Murray did not have the right to sue the board, but then changed that decision in 2007.

Murray and representatives of the school board did not offer comments on the decision.

A Virginia federal appeals court reinstated a personal injury lawsuit filed against McDonald’s after a man burnt his lips on a chicken sandwich.

The suit, originally filed five years ago, was thrown out in 2008 before a jury could come to a decision on whether McDonald’s was liable for 62-year-old Frank Sutton’s injuries. The lawsuit claimed Sutton’s fried chicken sandwich had popped with scalding grease from the deep fryer when he bit in, burning his mouth and lips, according to the Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton had thrown the case out during the jury trial, saying at the time that there was no actual proof McDonald’s had committed any wrongdoing.

“There’s just no evidence here of any kind of negligence,” Hilton said after he ordered the case to be dismissed. “He ordered a hot piece of chicken and he got a hot piece of chicken. It was hotter than he anticipated, and that was unfortunate.”

The Federal Appeals Court in Richmond, Va. reinstated the case based on evidence Judge Hilton had barred from the original jury trial, according to AP. Sutton’s defense reportedly had evidence that an employee working at the McDonald’s within the Daniel Boone truck stop in Duffield, Va. made a possible admission that the chicken was not cooked correctly.

According to Sutton’s lawyer, one of the employees saw Sutton’s burns and said something similar to, “This is what happens to the sandwiches when they aren’t drained completely.” The appeals court ruled that the jury should be allowed to hear that evidence, AP reported.

During the 2008 trial, Sutton testified that he and a few family members stopped at the Duffield truck stop around 1:30 a.m. and ordered food. Sutton’s friend Bill Giffon was at the McDonald’s at the time, and testified that “grease flew all over his mouth” when he bit into the sandwich, causing personal injury.

Sutton told the court that his lips were bleeding and blistered the following morning, and his wife testified that it was difficult to kiss her husband after he was burned. Sutton told the AP that he can still see scars from the damage.

“It’s a permanent situation with me at this point,” Sutton said. “My opinion is it was nothing but negligence on the part of the McDonald’s people.”

Sutton said he decide to sue only after McDonald’s declined to pay his medical bills, as well as $22,000 in lost wages for a job he lost while healing from the burns.

A spokeswoman from McDonald’s declined to say how often the food company is sued for burns that possibly happened because of their food’s temperature.