Why iCONECT?

At the time of its approval, blood-thinner Pradaxa had no available antidote. It was responsible for serious bleeding events, including death in thousands of patients, with the argument being that Boehringer used deceptive marketing practices to promote its new category of anticoagulant. The company settled 4,000 lawsuits for $650 million and the company was required to pay $95 million to settle a case over improper marketing.

Mattel was forced to pay $88.5 million to MG Entertainment in a dispute over the Bratz line of dolls. The court found that Mattel did not own drawings of Bratz dolls. The Bratz dolls hurt the sales of Barbie dolls significantly over the period of time that the Bratz dolls were on the market.

1,300 cases / plaintiffs in a MDL Litigation against Bayer claiming its Yasmin lin of birth-control pills caused blood clots in women. Bayer AG (BAYRY) said settlements of U.S. lawsuits over claims that its Yasmin line of birth-control pills caused blood clots have increased to more than $402 million.

Cases filed against Merck over adverse cardiovascular events associated with Rofecoxib and the adequacy of Merck’s warnings. Merck will pay nearly $1 billion to resolve criminal charges and civil claims related to its marketing of Vioxx, a widely used pain medicine that the giant drug maker pulled from the market in 2004. Close to 50,000 Plaintiff Lawsuits v Merck & Co, Inc. (settled in 2007 for $4.85 billion).

BP and three other energy companies reached a settlement with with thousands of individuals and businesses affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill that killed 11 workers and fouled the Gulf of Mexico with millions of gallons of oil. BP officials said they expect the company to pay out approximately 7.8 billion as a settlement with more than 100,000 plaintiffs who are suing the oil giant and others for their role in the spill.

The case relates to an incident in 2006 when slops from a cargo ship that Trafigura had chartered were dumped in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s main city. Oil-trading firm Trafigura Beheer BV said it has agreed to pay nearly £30 million ($48.7 million) in compensation to people in Ivory Coast who say they were made ill by waste dumped in the West African country.

Chinese Drywall refers to an environmental health issue involving defective drywall manufactured in China and imported to the USA starting in 2001. Laboratory test of samples for volatile chemicals have identified emissions of the sulfurous gases carbon disulfide, carbonyl sulfide, and hydrogen sulfide. The case name of the major lawsuit is MDL 2047, In re: Chinese-manufactured Drywall Products Liability Litigation. Settlements ongoing.

Oracle sued SAP, alleging that SAP had engaged in copyright infringement by downloading thousands of copyrighted documents and programs from Oracle’s Customer Connection website. Oracle, the world’s largest maker of database software, won a $1.3 billion jury verdict in the case in 2010. A federal judge reduced the award to $272 million. The companies agreed on a judgment for $306 million in damages “to save time and expense of this new trial.”

A cross-practice Sutherland team of more than 30 attorneys served as counsel for British Nuclear Fuels plc in BNFL’s $5.4 billion sale of Westinghouse Electric Company to Toshiba Corporation. The purchase agreement was signed in London on Monday, February 6, 2006. The $5.4 billion purchase price represents a significant return on BNFL’s investment, as the company bought Westinghouse in 1999 for only $1.1 billion.

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated while returning to Earth, killing the crew of seven. Beyond simply determining the immediate physical cause of the accident, NASA elected to expand its analysis into changes to the vehicle, to the Space Shuttle Program, and to NASA itself, to best move forward with a successful Return to Flight program. This analysis involved the review of materials by world-wide experts from academia, the aerospace industry, the federal government, and the military (including members remaining on the International Space Station). The Task Group’s Final Report was delivered to the NASA administrator, US Congress, and the American public in July 2005.

AMD launched the lawsuit against its rival, Intel, the world’s leading microprocessor manufacturer. AMD claimed that Intel engaged in unfair competition by offering rebates to Japanese PC manufacturers who agreed to eliminate or limit purchases of microprocessors made by AMD or a smaller manufacturer, Transmeta. Burying a very large hatchet in the computing industry, Intel agreed to pay Advanced Micro Devices $1.25 billion as part of a settlement.

Bombardier settled a long-running dispute over the purchase price paid in its acquisition of the Adtranz rail car division for $300 million less than it was seeking. Claims that the German manufacturer had vastly overstated the value of the Adtranz division – in a purchase that had briefly vaulted Bombardier to the #1 global train-making spot – were filed at the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce in 2001. With the settlement, the parties had finalized what turned out to be a $1.1 billion deal.

Kodak sued Sun in 2002, claiming that Sun’s Java programming language violated three of its patents. Case resulted in the jury’s finding of infringement by Sun Microsystems in favor of Kodak, which resulted in a settlement of $92 million in exchange for a license under Kodak’s patents.

Federal energy regulators investigation of Enron to review that the bankrupt power-trader had used “deceit” and “false information” in an attempt to profit from California’s troubled electricity market. In addition to probing three Enron subsidiaries for possible misconduct during the California crisis in 2000 and 2001, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission investigated two out-of-state electric utilities that did business with Enron.