After dozens of reports of fires in Dodge Durango and Jeep Liberty sport utility vehicles, Daimler Chrysler AG’s Chrysler Group recalled nearly 500,000 vehicles Friday.

The automaker was also recalling 149,605 Jeep Liberty SUVs from the 2006-2007 model years to fix the heating-ventilation-air conditioning blower motor. Chrysler had received a dozen reports of fires from Liberty owners.

In the Liberty recall, Gates said the blower motors could fail if the air conditioning is being used on high during hot weather.

Drivers who smell an odor such as overheated plastic should keep their blower motor below the highest setting until they bring their vehicle in for service, Chrysler said. Liberty owners are expected to receive notices about the recall in May.

If you or a family member has been injured in the state of Washington, please contact the Product liability lawyers at Phillips and Webster, PLLC. With easy accessible offices in the Seattle, Washington; Bellevue, Washington and Woodinville, Washington areas.

Two teams of researchers with access to thousands of documents gathered for lawsuits over the painkiller Vioxx allege that Merck waged a campaign of deception to promote its drug, moving slowly to warn of possible hazards while at the same time dressing up in-house studies as the work of independent academic researchers. The reports in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association in effect accuse one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical makers of various forms of scientific fraud. One study alleges that Merck gave the Food and Drug Administration an incomplete accounting of deaths in a clinical trial of Vioxx in people with mild dementia. Federal regulators eventually received the data, which added to growing evidence that Vioxx increased the risk of heart attacks and stokes.

Simultaneously, Merck was using what the JAMA author call “guest authorship and ghostwriting” to make it appear that research done by its employees or contractors was the work of scientists at medical schools and universities. That presumably gave the finding more credibility when they were published, in medical journals, boosting Vioxx’s profile in the crowded painkiller marker.

The two JAMA papers — which were based on access to company documents made public through the lawsuits — say they provide a look at widespread practices in the pharmaceutical industry. Make no mistake though, the manipulation of study results, authors, editors, and reviewers is not the sole purview of one company.

If you or a family member has been injured in the state of Washington, please contact the Vioxx lawyers at Phillips and Webster, PLLC. With easy accessible offices in the Seattle, Washington; Bellevue, Washington and Woodinville, Washington areas.

The Duragesic patch is manufactured by Janssen Pharmaceutica and Alza Corp. The patch was put on the market in 1991 abd subce tgat tune byneriys cases if Fentanyl overdosing from the patch have been reported. In 2001 there was a problem with the manufacturing process. The problems are, fold overs in the backing of the patch system, gel in the seal, seal breaches, corners of the patch system cut off, holes in the drug reservoir, slits in the patch’s pouch and system, air bubbles in the adhesive layers of the system, no gel in the system and lack of adhesion in the patch system. The patch has now been recalled. This is just another example of the drug companies putting profits over people.

If you or a family member has been injured in the state of Washington, please contact the product liability lawyers at Phillips and Webster, PLLC. With easy accessible offices in the Seattle, Washington; Bellevue, Washington and Woodinville, Washington areas.