A 16-month investigation by the US Senate Finance Committee concludes that the medical device maker, Medtronic Inc, paid doctors millions of dollars and edited health journal articles which failed to mention complications from their Infuse bone-grafting device. 

The device was approved in 2002 by the FDA to help patients with a degenerative disease of the lower spine and was used to stimulate spinal bone growth.  However, the device is most often used off-label for repairs to the cervical spinal area.  These off-label uses can come with a host of problems including compression of the airway, nerve damage, difficulty breathing or swallowing, and even death. 

The studies that were manipulated failed to mention these complications and others and wrongly promoted the Infuse device.  Medtronic denies these allegations. 

According to the company, the product has generated approximately $800 million in 2011 and has been use to treat over 500,000 patients. 

A declaration has been filed by a former assistant dean of career services at Thomas Jefferson Law School stating that graduate employment statistics were padded in 2006.

The declaration was filed as part of a class action lawsuit alleging fraud against the institution that was filed by Anna Alaburda, a 2008 Thomas Jefferson graduate.  Similar suits have been filed against an additional 14 law schools around the country, three of which have been dismissed. 

Karen Grant, the former assistant dean, acknowledges in her declaration that she was instructed to record graduates as ‘employed’ if they had been employed any time after graduation, even if they were currently unemployed.  According to American Bar Association rules, law schools are only to report graduates as employed if they have a job nine months after graduation.

Alaburda’s suit is in the discovery process after surviving the initial motion to dismiss. 

Yesterday, the Lincoln, California based Weco Aerospace Systems, Inc. was indicted with charges of conspiracy to commit fraud.

Executives of the company are said to have allowed technicians to use unapproved parts in repairs.  One instance brought forward by Prosecutors allegedly occurred in 2007 when a supervisor used a paperclip in the place of an approved part to fix a customer’s windshield wiper motor.  Once finished, the supervisor returned the part stating that the repair had been done properly.

Weco has repaired converters responsible for supplying electrical power to aircrafts and has also repaired helicopters. 

While, according to prosecutors, the company didn’t have the proper equipment to perform tests required to certify a repaired part, there have been no known instances where a device repaired fraudulently by Weco resulted in an accident.

The Federal Communications Commission has settled with Comcast over charges that the cable company made it hard for consumers to find stand-alone broadband packages that don’t cost an arm and leg. As part of the settlement Comcast paid the U.S. Treasury $800,000 and the FCC extended the length of time Comcast had to provide such a service.

The cable provider was ordered by the agency to provide access to “a reasonably priced broadband option to consumers who do not receive their cable service from the company” under the Commission’s Order approving the Comcast-NBCU transaction in 2010. Further, the FCC also said Comcast would have to provide the stand-alone reasonable broadband-only package for another year — until February 21, 2015.

Comcast didn’t admit fault as part of the settlement, but it did lay out some cash and pledge to make its cheaper stand-alone service more visible. It will train its call agents, make sure the offering is visible on its web site and it committed to a major marketing campaign around the Performance Started service for 2013. Ironically this comes at a time when Verizon is pulling back on offering stand-alone DSL. 

Illegal manipulation of customers’ debit card transactions has forced PNC Bank, a smaller unit of PNC Financial Services Inc., into a lawsuit in which they will have to pay at least $90 million to settle. The bank’s actions resulted in a higher amount of overdraft fees because it’s computer system resequenced the order of debit card and ATM transactions. According to the statement, the transactions were posted in highest-to-lowest dollar amount instead of the actual order in which they were initiated which led to excess overdraft fees.

The pending case will be evaluated later this summer by U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King in Miami and involves more than 30 banks. Other banks such as Toronto-Dominion Bank, Citizens Bank, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have also reached settlements of $62 million, $127.5 million, and $110 million respectively to settle overdraft claims.

Opening utility bills in these tough economic times can be a dreaded task. We shudder before we tear open the envelope knowing rates have skyrocketed. More often than not, though, the sums on our monthly statements are justified, and we pay our bills, however begrudgingly, in order to keep our gas, power and phones in service. Every once in a while, though, the balance on a statement can seem inflated.

Citizens all across Texas noticed something fishy on their electricity bills and have now taken the state’s largest power provider to court for over billing. The lawsuit claims that Oncor Electric Delivery Co. installed defective “smart meters” that caused residential customers to be billed nearly $2,000 a month. Plaintiffs Robert and Jennifer Cordts say their already high monthly electric bills, which average anywhere between $400 and $700 per month, shot up to over $1,800 after a smart meter was installed. The ironic thing is that smart meters were designed to deliver more information to the utility company than average meters and are meant to adjust billing according to the time of day or season so that customers will actually pay less when demand is low and more when demand is high.

The Cordts say when they questioned Oncor about their ridiculously costly bills, the company interrogated them about their power habits regarding everything from Christmas lights to thermostat controls. Soon after they complained, the couple received another bill for more than $1,800. The lawsuit states that the Cordts have received three months worth of electrical bills that total nearly $5,000, an amount that deflates Oncor’s explanations of cold temperatures or additional use of lighting as the reason for the steep increases. The Cordts are seeking damages from Oncor for fraud and negligence. 

According to the lawsuit, 829,000 smart meters were installed throughout the state. Oncor’s testing of the meters has thus far provided insignificant evidence that the meters produce fair and accurate billing data, according to the Cordts’ legal team. The lawsuit also alleges that CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric has admitted that the smart meters have technical glitches and flaws that could produce inaccurate billing information.