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.

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.

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.

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.

Sandra Livingston, a Long Island, New York resident, filed the federal suit against the Japanese auto maker on Feb. 22. A spokesman for Toyota said he would not make any comment about pending court actions.

The vehicle in question in this lawsuit is a Toyota Yaris, which at this time is not included in the eight different Toyota models that have been recalled due to braking and accelerating issues. About 8.5 million Toyota vehicles have been recalled worldwide.

Tyrene Livingston was driving on state Route 30 in east Pittsburgh around 8:45 a.m. on Oct. 26, 2007. According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, she was pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh and was on her way to a teaching internship at the time.

The personal injury lawsuit claims Tyrene Livingston’s Yaris started accelerating quickly, and she was not able to stop the vehicle with the brakes.

“The Yaris crossed four lanes of the highway at a high rate of speed, went over a curb, crashed through a guardrail, went down an embankment, and into some trees, eventually resulting in her death,” according to the suit.

Four days before the crash, Tyrene Livingston had taken the vehicle into an auto shop for a brake inspection and test. She was told nothing was wrong with her vehicle, according to the Post Gazette.

Bob Massie Toyota, the service shop that gave the inspection, was not named a defendant in the lawsuit. Sandra Livingston’s attorney Todd Walburg told the Post Gazette that he has not found any proof of wrongdoing on the part of the shop.

“Even though the Yaris isn’t included on any recall lists, our investigation shows that all Toyota vehicles, from 2002 to the present, can possibly have a defect in the electronic throttle system,” Walburg said to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Livingston’s suit is among two others filed by Pittsburgh-area residents against the automaker, citing acceleration problems. McMurray resident Robert Elmes, 76, sued Toyota in 2008 for about $75,000 in damages stemming from an accident he was in while driving a 2002 Camry.

Elmes claimed in his injury lawsuit that his Camry accelerated without any warning to a high speed and he drove off a bank. HIs 2002 model Camry was not included in the recent recall.

The lawsuit claims Sheryl Mann Stack, widow of the plane’s pilot Andrew Joseph Stack III, should have warned people that her husband might be dangerous and “owed a duty to exercise reasonable care to avoid foreseeable risk of injury to others.”

Valerie Hunter, wife of Vernon Hunter who was killed in the plane crash, filed the seven-page wrongful death personal injury suit on Feb. 22 in the Travis County Courthouse in Texas.

Joseph Stack, a software engineer, flew his Piper Cherokee PA28 single-engine plane into the side of an IRS office in Austin, Texas, killing himself and Hunter while also injuring 13 other people. Stack left behind a lengthy typed manifesto that was posted on his company Web site before he crashed the plane. The note described several years of anguish and contempt against the U.S. government and taxation within the country.

Stack was facing financial woes and set his house on fire before flying his plane into the IRS building, according to the Austin American Statesman.

The suit listed negligence under the causes of actions section against both Joseph and Sheryl Stack. It claims Joseph was flying in violation of FAA regulations by flying too low in an area with obstacles.

It also alleges that Sheryl Stack was negligent since she took her daughter and stayed at a hotel out of fear the night before Stack crashed the plane. The suit claims that action meant she had a responsibility to inform others that her husband could be dangerous.

Valerie Hunter’s injury attorney Dan Ross told the American-Statesman that the Hunter family wants to know if insurance proceeds given to the Stack family could be considered part of awarded damages in the lawsuit.

The suit requested a jury trial to be held and damages to be awarded. Within an affidavit filed along with the wrongful death lawsuit, Valerie Hunter requested that results of an autopsy performed on 67-year-old Vernon Hunter remain sealed from the public.

“This is an extremely difficult time for me and my family and the release of the autopsy report to the public will cause me and my family severe and irreparable emotional distress,” Valerie Hunter wrote in the signed affidavit. “Once the report is released, I will not have an adequate remedy at law as the damage will be done.”

Natasha Child sued Ogden police officer Ken Hammond on claims that he used excessive force against both her and her husband during a May 2008 arrest.

The personal injury suit was settled without either party confirming any the terms of the settlement. U.S. District judge Tena Campbell dismissed the suit with an agreement on both sides to terms, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

The injury lawsuit came after Hammond’s role  in a Feb. 12, 2007 shootout at Trolley Square which left many people claiming him a hero.

Sulejman Talovic, 18, opened fire at the Salt Lake City-area shopping mall, killing five bystanders and wounding four others. Hammond was off duty at the mall when the shooting took place, and held Talovic off in a shoot out until other officers arrived and gunned Talovic down, according to the Utah-based Fox 13 network.

Child’s suit claimed that she suffered police brutality on May 18, 2008, as her husband was being arrested by Utah State Highway Patrol officers in the Ogden area on suspicion  of drunk driving.

Hammond was assisting patrol officers with the arrest. Child claimed Hammond kicked out her husband’s legs from under him and elbowed him, even though her husband was cooperating.

When Child told Hammond she was witness to his actions, Hammond allegedly order her to be arrested as well. The suit further claimed that while Child was handcuffed, Hammond lifted her hands over her head and her pants started falling while she struggled.

Hammond pulled her pants the rest of the way down to the ground, according to the Tribune. The suit claims Hammond then said, “Now you don’t have to worry about them.” Child also claimed Hammond slammed her to the ground during the arrest.

Child was later charged with interfering with an arrest, public intoxication, resisting an officer and disorderly conduct, although the charges were later dropped, the Tribune reported.

The suit also implicated the Ogden Police Department for failing to properly train Hammond, even though both Hammond and the police department denied all charges against them from the injury suit.

Child’s suit was not the last legal entanglement for Hammond. Hammond resigned from the Ogden Police Department in January 2009 during an investigation into charges that he had sex with a teenager.

Hammond later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in relation to the charge and was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

A federal judge recently dismissed a personal injury lawsuit filed by the former NFL wide receiver against the Tennessee Titans football team. The judge said Givens will have to pursue further action through arbitration under the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement.

In a $25 million personal injury lawsuit filed in September 2009 against the Titans, Givens claims he was encouraged to play in games, even though it was known he had a knee condition that could not hold up against the jarring impacts of NFL play, according to the Tennessean.

U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell dismissed the suit by filing an order. Within the order, Judge Campbell wrote that Givens’ suit was not “sufficiently independent of the terms of the collective bargaining agreement” made between the football league and the players.

“The Supreme Court has held that because preempted claims must first be presented through the arbitration procedure established in the collective bargaining agreement, those claims be dismissed,” Campbell wrote.

The Titans have not released a statement about Givens’ suit since it was thrown out.

The suit claims Givens was not made aware of results of an examination on his knee made by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Tomas Byrd. According to the suit, Byrd’s exam found Givens might need surgery at some point on the knee due to a large defect within his knee joint, where the upper leg connects to the knee the Tennessean reported.

Byrd’s report continued to say the condition and treatment for it could have kept him out of the NFL for a whole season, according to the suit. Byrd examinated Givens before he signed a 5 year contract with the football team in March 2006.

Givens’ sports injury occurred in November 2006 during a home game against the Baltimore Ravens. The suit claims the lesion in his knee had crumbled, and he has not played in an NFL game since then.

The suit further states that Givens did not know about his knee condition until February 2009, when he finally reviewed the medical file.

Givens’ attorney Dan Warlick told the Tennessean that the decision by Campbell was not a surprise. Warlick said Campbell’s ruling does not question the actual validity of the suit.

“When we filed, it was one of the issues we had to overcome, whether we could get it into federal court without the arbitration,” Warlick said. “We just thought federal court would be a better place to try.”

Martha Neely, mother of 36-year-old Brett Howie, filed the personal injury lawsuit against Jefferson County, Sheriff Gerald Robinson and Deputy Randy Dolphin, who had fired the Taser at Howie during a chase.

Howie was wanted on two felony warrants at the time of his death for missing court dates based on charges placed on him in 2005. Howie was charged with possession of a controlled substance as well as delivery and manufacturing a controlled substance.

On Feb. 19, 2007, Howie was fleeing Jefferson County deputies, including Dolphin, who were trying to arrest him on the two warrants he had out, and chased to an area near a pond outside of Pine Bluff, Ark.

But what happened next is disputed between Neely’s attorney, Austin Porter Jr., and the sheriff’s office.

Both Arkansas State Police investigators who looked into Howie’s drowning and Prosecuting Attorney Stevan Dalrymple put into official record that no Taser darts made contact with Howie’s skin, and decided the Taser could not have contributed to his death, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

However, Porter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that Dolphin’s Taser did shock Howie while he was in the pond, based on local police reports and Neely’s own firsthand account of what happened, since she was there when Howie died.

According to the suit, Dolphin “Tasered Mr. Howie, who in turn became incapacitated due to the electrical shock. As a result of being incapacitated … Brett drowned in the lake.”

Dolphin, who is still working for the sheriff’s office as a sergeant, did not respond to the Democrat-Gazette’s attempts to reach him, and the sheriff’s office also did not offer any comment on the lawsuit.

Arkansas State Police Spokesman Bill Sadler wrote in an email that the state police worked about a 2 month long investigation into the case, and closed it on April 27, 2007.

Within the email, Sadler wrote that Dolphin told detectives he had fired the Taser at Howie, but missed him.

“Howie swam further toward the opposite lake bank, submerged underwater, reappeared on the surface, then submerged a second time,” Sadler wrote in the email.

Deputies were originally called out to the area near the pond for a domestic dispute, and were told Howie was the cause of the disturbance, according to the Democrat-Gazette.

Ford decided to pay $16 million to Lynn Wheeler recently during the end of a trial in Clayton County, Ga., while they jury was deciding whether to fine Ford for punitive damages beyond the initially-requested $17.7 million, according to an article in the Fulton County Daily Report.

The jury ruled that Ford was liable for damages to compensate what Wheeler and her attorneys described as design problems with the Ford Explorer.

Around Christmas 2005, Wheeler was riding in the middle of the back seat in a 2002 Ford Explorer sport model SUV, which seats five passengers, according to the Fulton County Daily Report. Wheeler’s son was driving, his wife was seated in the front seat and Wheeler herself was seated between her two young grandchildren in booster seats.

A smaller sport coupe was coming the opposite way and lost control while making a turn. The vehicle slammed head-on into the Explorer. Alan Hamilton, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, said that Wheeler’s son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren walked away from the car accident with “essentially no significant injury at all.”

Wheeler, on the other hand, was severely injured. With a lap seat belt to hold her, Wheeler was sent forward and down at force when the rear seat latch failed and collapsed on her, according to the Daily Report.

The pre-trial report read that “Lynn Wheeler’s head and neck were driven down and forward into the front seat and/or center console, catastrophically injuring her spinal cord.”

Hamilton said that Wheeler is also on a ventilator to help with breathing, in addition to being paralyzed.

The suit claimed the auto maker was negligent on the vehicle’s design of both the rear seat latch and the lap belt put in place for the middle seat rear seat, instead of a belt with a shoulder restraint of some sort.

The suit also claimed Ford did not provide enough warning for both the Wheelers and the general public about the possibility of the injury that happened to Lynn.

Ford argued that at the time, the Explorer had exceeded all government-mandated safety requirements.

Attorneys for the company argued further that the lap belt was a needed addition to accommodate child safety seats, and that they can be safer for smaller children who do not fit properly with shoulder-restraining belts.

Ford’s attorneys argued that it was not technologically possible to install a shoulder-belt in the middle of a bench seat, which is where Wheeler was seated.

Ford’s attorneys also argued that the rear seat latch was tested to hold through similar force as the accident that Wheeler was in.