Lawsuits

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Class Action Lawsuits for Cramming and other Charges on your Bill
January 23rd 2006

Is it worth fighting?
Have you ever seen charges on your telephone bill that you never authorized?  According to the law firm Wechsler Harwood LLP you have been crammed.  Phone companies and others may cram other charges on your bill without your permission. 

Cramming is the practice of including unauthorized charges on a telephone customer’s bill.  An example could be “900 Romance”.  According to the law firm, the charges are sometimes only a few dollars, and the goal may be to “fly below the radar”.  Most customers may not pick up on the charge and just pay the bill. 

According to Wechsler Harwood LLP, if the customer does dispute the charge they are “frequently stonewalled by representatives of the telephone company”. 

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Pfizer Disputes New Zealand Celebrex Heart Attack Link Study - Merck & Co Wins Second Vioxx Lawsuit
March 2nd 2006

Celebrex
A New Zealand study found that People taking Celebrex were twice as likely to suffer a heart attack as those using other pain relief treatments.  A similar drug, Merck & Company’s Vioxx, had been removed from the market in September 2004 because of safety concerns. 
The research, conducted by the New Zealand Medical Research Institute, entailed reviewing six studies of 12,780 patients.  The researchers wanted to determine if the problems associated with Vioxx were also associated with Celebrex. 
Both Vioxx and Celebrex are cox-2 inhibitors, commonly prescribed for treating arthritis pain.  The study found that there was a 1.88-fold increased risk of heart attack with Celebrex, compared with the other arthritis treatments. 

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Record Companies Investigated For Online Music Price Collusion by Justice Department - Compare Apple iTunes With Wal-Mart Licensing Agreements

March 5th 2006


Apple Allows for CD Case Creation

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is looking into whether the major music companies “colluded” in setting wholesale prices for digital Music downloads. This comes on the tail of Apple’s sale of their 1 billionth song off of their iTunes Website.

The DOJ investigation follows a similar investigation by the New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. In a recent Fox News reports by Tim Arango, this could have stemmed from a “very public spat between the music industry and Apple chief Steve Jobs over pricing on the iTunes service, which charges 99 cents per track.”

Since December, Spitzer has widened his probe, formally asking for information from several online music services. According to a WWMT CBS News report, two record company officials say the investigation seems to be focusing on whether the labels are in cahoots when it comes to setting prices for tunes.

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