Four Pittsburgh firefighters recently filed a lawsuit against several manufacturers alleging loud sirens on the fire trucks have caused them to suffer hearing loss.

Firefighters Ralph Bilski, Jeremiah Dengler, Roger Maher, III, and Mark Godlewski all have worked as firefighters for the city for years, some as many as three decades. They claim that the sirens have caused irreversible hearing damage and they allege that the trucks were defective in that they lacked sufficient insulation to protect their hearing. Additionally, they claim that the defendant manufacturers, American Lafrance, E-One Inc., Kovatch Mobile Equipment Corp., Mack Trucks Inc., Pierce Manufacturing Inc., Seagrave Fire Apparatus and Federal Signal Corp, failed to provide warnings about their use.
 
The lawsuit does not name the city of Pittsburgh as a defendant.

—Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette

An Upper East Side, New York, woman is suing a Westchester horse farm for $2 million dollars, claiming she was sold a defective show pony.

Barbara Tichner-Dildabanian bought Sports Talk, a 6-year-old gelding, last year for $175,000. The horse joined a stable of four other ponies owned by the family whose 12-year-old daughter is an award-winning equestrian. Tichner-Dildabanian alleges that the pony's health deteriorated after the purchase and that her horse broker, Heritage Farm of Westchester, failed to disclose a veterinary check that showed damage to the horse's hooves.  Veterinarian Christopher Miller is also being sued on grounds that he failed to alert the new owner to the alleged problem.

Peter Axelrod, a lawyer for Heritage Farm, said the lawsuit is misdirected and that the previous owner of the horse, not the broker and vet, should be sued.

“These are very expensive hobbies to maintain,” said the attorney. “You’re buying an animal. There are really no guarantees. Not every horse is going to be Secretariat.”

The previous owner denies there being any prior health problems, and defended the veterinarian as well.

“This sounds absolutely ridiculous to me,” Bibby Farmer-Hill told reporters. “I never had a single problem with that horse in any way.”

Another previous owner confirmed Sports Talk never showed any physical defects.

According to news sources, records show Sports Talk won several events earlier this year.

—Source: New York Post

For the third time, a Wisconsin woman's lawsuit against Internet search companies for allegedly violating her privacy has been dismissed by a court.

Beverly Stayart's latest suit claims that Google violated Wisconsin's misappropriation law by using her name without permission to generate revenue through online advertising. According to the lawsuit filed in federal appeals court in Chicago, Stayart alleged that Google searches for “Bev Stayart” prompts Google to offer “Bev Stayart levitra” as a search term, which results in unwelcome links to ads for medications including Levitra, Cialis and Viagra, all trademarked treatments for male erectile dysfunction. A self-proclaimed genealogy scholar and animal rights activist, Stayart asserts that she is the only "Bev or Beverly Stayart on the Internet," and therefore her name has significant commercial value and is a competitive keyword phrase for Internet search engines.

Wisconsin law protects unauthorized commercial exploitation of a person’s name but only if the connection between the two is substantial. In March 2011, District Judge Lynn Adelman dismissed Stayart’s suit, concluding that her name had no commercial value and that Google receives no value from the connection between her name and sexual dysfunction medications. The appeals court agreed, noting that Stayart's suits against Internet search companies have made her name a matter of public interest, which is an exception to the law under which she is suing. Two previous federal suits filed by Stayart against search engine Yahoo! also were dismissed.

Stayart called the recent decision “economically driven” and said the court was “ignoring the law in favor of big businesses.”

She also has a misappropriation suit in Walworth County Circuit against online data website Various, Inc.

—Source:  GazetteXtra.com (Janesville, WI)

The Health Plan of Nevada (HPN) has been slapped with a $500 million punitive damages award for its nonexistent role in the spread of hepatitis C through a local endoscopy clinic.

According to news sources, a local endoscopy center run by Dipak Desai knowingly engaged in unsafe infection control practices that ultimately sickened several of his patients and forced tens of thousands more to be tested for the blood-borne disease. In addition to suing the doctor, plaintiffs' lawyers sought deeper pockets, targeting the companies that made and distributed the anesthetic used in outpatient colonoscopies, as well as the local health plan, HPN, for including Desai in its provider network.

HPN faces 40 additional lawsuits, in addition to the one in which a Clark County District Court jury found the local insurer liable and awarded $500 million in punitive damages. Critics claim that the chips were stacked against HPN because District Judge Timothy C. Williams barred the jury from hearing evidence that Desai and his staff engaged in horrific misconduct and ignored FDA-approved warnings on medicine vials against re-use, as well as evidence that showed how insurers rely on numerous private and government regulatory site visits and the resulting credentialing and licensing.

—Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal