E-cigarette companies fined over false claims about toxic chemicals

Australia’s competition regulator has become the first in the world to successfully take legal action against e-cigarette companies for making false and misleading claims about the carcinogens in their products.

Federal court Justice John Gilmour ordered three online e-cigarette retailers – The Joystick Company Pty Ltd, Social-Lites Pty Ltd and Elusion Australia Ltd – and their individual CEOs and directors to pay penalties for breaching consumer law.

In separate proceedings the court found each of the companies had claimed their products did not contain harmful carcinogens and toxins, when this was not the case. It also found that the directors of Joystick and Elusion, and the CEO of Social-Lites, were knowingly involved in this deception.

Joystick and Social-Lites have been ordered to pay a penalty of $ 50,000, while the company heads have been ordered to pay $ 10,000. Elusion has been ordered to pay $ 40,000 and its director $ 15,000.

All three retailers admitted the conduct alleged by the ACCC and consented to the amounts of the penalties.

According to the case brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), statements on the company websites led consumers to believe they would not be exposed to the harmful chemicals found in ordinary cigarettes.

However independent testing commissioned by the ACCC identified the presence of carcinogens and toxic chemicals, such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein in the products of Joystick, Social-Lites and Elusion, as well as acetone in Social-Lites’ products.

Formaldehyde is classified by the World Health Organisation International Agency for Research on Cancer as a Group 1A carcinogen, meaning it causes cancer, while acetaldehyde is classified as possibly carcinogenic. Acrolein is classified as a toxic chemical.

Dr Becky Freeman, a tobacco control researcher with the University of Sydney’s school of public health, said some consumers thought e-cigarette companies were “small artisan companies interested in improving health” when in fact most were owned by big tobacco.

Many advertisements for e-cigarettes and related products claimed they were less toxic and therefore less harmful than tobacco, she said. “But I’d challenge you to find something that isn’t less toxic than tobacco,” Freeman said. “We have no long-term data on e-cigarettes to show that they’ve help people quit for good or that they’re safe.”

The federal court ruling was “enormously significant”, said Simon Chapman, an emeritus professor of public health. He was aware that other complaints about e-cigarette advertising have been made to the ACCC. “These are by no means isolated examples,” Chapman said.

“Tobacco companies want to walk on both sides of the street. They try to argue that e-cigarettes are simply an ordinary consumer product and not a therapeutic device and therefore shouldn’t be subject to the same regulations, yet they often make statements that these things are excellent ways of quitting.”

He said it was “insulting to science” to claim the products were harmless or safe given the lack of evidence about long-term effects.

“Of course they don’t have all the products of combustion that tobacco products have, as they are vaporised and not burned. So while they’re likely to be less harmful, we do not yet know the magnitude of their harm, we just have no accurate way of estimating that yet,” said Chapman.

The ACCC’s acting chair, Delia Rickard, said businesses, including those online, must ensure they provide accurate information to customers and have a reasonable basis for making any claims. “This is particularly important for products that may cause harm to the health of consumers,” she said.

E-cigarette companies fined over false claims about toxic chemicals

Brothers fined over "depressing, unsafe" Liverpool care home

Two brothers have been fined more than £82,000 after their “depressing, unhygienic and unsafe” care home was shut down by inspectors.

Amjad Latif, 56, and his younger brother Amer, 47, ran the Mossley Manor care home in Liverpool until June 2015 when a new resident’s daughter was so appalled by conditions that she took her mother home after two hours and complained to the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

CQC inspectors gagged at the smell in some residents’ rooms when they made a surprise inspection, Liverpool magistrates court heard on Monday. The inspectors found elderly people who had not bathed properly for four weeks and had not been washed in days.

One man with Parkinson’s disease was taken to hospital with aspiration pneumonia after choking because carers kept giving him food he could not swallow. His need to be fed mashed food and have his head held up while drinking had not been properly recorded on his care plan, the court heard.

Sentencing the brothers on Monday after the CQC brought a case against them, a district judge branded Mossley Manor “a lack of care home, not a care home”.

Judge Andrew Shaw told the court he was shocked by the harrowing conditions suffered by some of the 43 elderly residents living there when it was closed. The Latif brothers had betrayed their vulnerable clients, he said.

Fees at the home started at £1,000 a month for council-funded residents, with private residents charged almost twice that.

A shortage of hot water meant that staff regularly had to boil pots of water in the kitchen in order to do the washing up or the most cursory bed baths. One resident showed inspectors the bathroom near their bedroom where there was no running water in the sink, a blocked toilet and no plug for the bath.

Some communal toilets were without soap, towels or plastic bags in the bins, with used incontinence pads left around residents’ rooms.

One bedroom window was broken in three places and the cracks had been taped over. It was also jammed open, leaving a 5cm gap that the resident tried to block with socks to keep warm.

A blind woman who fell 14 times in a year was told to press an alarm she could not see if she got into difficulty, said Jenny Ashworth, prosecuting, who branded the home “depressing, unhygienic and unsafe”.

In one of the most shocking observations in the CQC’s 16-page report, inspectors wrote: “We went into some people’s bedrooms and were shocked at the terrible smell and state of their rooms. On two occasions we had to leave the rooms as the smell of stale urine and body odour was overpowering.

“In one of these rooms a person was lying in bed at lunchtime. This person had incontinence issues and required incontinence aids. The records showed that this person had not had a bath or a shower in the four weeks prior to the inspection and had not had a wash for five days.

“We asked a member of the care staff why this person was in bed and they told us that they thought that the person was depressed as they kept saying that they wanted to die. We could not see that any appropriate action had been taken to support this person.”

The substantial Victorian property is part of an estate currently on the market for £2.5m. The elder Latif brother lives in a £1m house in Bowdon, Cheshire, while his younger sibling lives in a £1.2m gated house on a tree-lined street in Woolton, south Liverpool.

The brothers admitted at an earlier hearing that they had failed to notify authorities about the deaths of 10 residents at the home, failed to inform the CQC of three serious incidents, failed to provide safe care and exposed residents to “significant” risk and harm.

They pleaded guilty to 14 charges in all, between 14 April and June 2015.

Fining the brothers £82,429.72, the judge said he had been affected by reading the case papers. “It was a distressing experience and emotionally I felt both a degree of incredulity and anger that the residents in this home were so betrayed by the individuals paid to look after them and deriving a considerable amount for doing so,” Shaw told Amjad Latif, the only brother to attend court.

Latif’s lawyer, Kevin Donnelly, said his client was an educated man with many business interests who had inherited the business from his late father. He wrongly assumed the care home would run itself, Donnelly said. He was remorseful “and accepts that these failures were wide-ranging and significant”.

Amjad declined to talk to reporters outside court, saying: “There’s nothing left to say.”

But one couple whose mothers were both at Mossley Manor, paying £450 a week for private care, said the tough fine should be a deterrent.

“Let this be a lesson to other care home owners that you have got to follow the guidelines of the CQC otherwise they will close you down,” said the husband, whose mother was 91 when she had to leave the home and move to another with just four days’ notice after the CQC shut it down.

He said he was shocked and disgusted to hear how bad conditions had become. “It must have mostly been happening behind closed doors because our mothers were quite well looked after – but we were in almost every day to check on them,” he said. “Perhaps it was the others who didn’t receive any visitors. It was horrendous to hear what was going on.”

Brothers fined over "depressing, unsafe" Liverpool care home

Mid Staffordshire NHS trust fined for "avoidable and tragic death"

Gillian Astbury died at Stafford hospital in 2007. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA

The Mid Staffordshire NHS basis trust has been fined £200,000 and ordered to spend far more than £27,000 in expenses over what the judge described as “the wholly avoidable and tragic death of a vulnerable patient”.

The Overall health and Safety Executive brought an unprecedented criminal case against the believe in above the death of Gillian Astbury, 66, who died in 2007 due to the fact nurses at Stafford hospital failed to give her the program insulin she needed to remain alive.

The Francis inquiry into bad requirements of care at Mid Staffs looked in detail at the Astbury situation and criticised the HSE for an apparent inability to determine whether it should prosecute, despite the inquest jury’s findings that there had been a gross failure to give care. The HSE announced last August that it would bring the situation. In court, the trust pleaded guilty to an offence under the Wellness and Safety at Perform Act.

The court heard that health-related personnel did not comply with – and often did not even search at – Astbury’s healthcare notes, which plainly stated that she essential insulin, normal blood exams and a specific diet regime. Problems had been made as her ward underwent as a lot of as eight shift adjustments and 11 medicines rounds per day. The technique for handovers, when nurses arriving for the next shift ought to be informed of the demands of the individuals, was “inconsistent and at times non-existent”, the believe in admitted.

“Mid Staffordshire NHS basis trust failed to apply a correct handover technique, or to oversee the correct completion of nursing records and the monitoring of care ideas,” stated Peter Galsworthy, HSE head of operations in the West Midlands. “In performing so, they put Gillian Astbury at risk. The trust’s programs have been just not robust adequate to make sure that staff regularly followed concepts of very good communication and record retaining. Gillian’s death was completely preventable. She just essential to be provided insulin.

“Gillian Astbury and her loved ones were failed by Mid Staffordshire NHS foundation believe in. Each hospital patient has the right to expect much more. Significant security management flaws had been recognized by our investigation. We expect lessons to be learned across the NHS to avert this taking place once again.”

Astbury, who had been admitted to the hospital in 2007 due to the fact of fractures to her arm and pelvis, lapsed into a coma right after nurses failed to give her the insulin injections she needed to stay alive. Two nurses had failed to notice her high blood sugar levels – each have been disciplined and 1 was struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council final year.

“It was a wholly avoidable and tragic death of a vulnerable patient admitted to hospital for care but who died simply because of a lack of it,” said the judge, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave.

“A important fine is referred to as for to reflect the gravity of the offence, the loss of a lifestyle and in purchase to send out a robust message to all organisations, public or private, accountable for the care and welfare of members of the public.”

Mid Staffordshire NHS trust fined for "avoidable and tragic death"

Surgeon struck off in Britain banned from practising and fined in New Jersey

A doctor who fled to the US from Britain after becoming convicted of manslaughter has once more been banned from practising and fined almost $ 500,000, for injuring patients with surgeries he was not competent to execute.

Dr Richard Kaul was stripped of his American licence at a meeting of New Jersey’s board of health-related examiners, which also ordered him to pay $ 300,000 in civil penalties and $ 175,422 to reimburse the state for legal charges and investigation expenses.

John Hoffman, the acting New Jersey lawyer common, explained the board’s selection would defend the public “from a person who place sufferers in harm’s way, and very candidly had no qualms or remorse about repeatedly performing so”.

“Dr Kaul’s sufferers in truth did sustain extra maladies as effectively as uncorrected health-related problems, as a direct end result of Dr Kaul’s improper procedures,” Hoffman mentioned in a statement after the verdict, which confirmed a 3-month skilled prosecution of Kaul last 12 months.

Kaul, 49, became a multimillionaire right after arriving in the US and reinventing himself as a pioneering keyhole spine surgeon, in spite of his only hands-on education getting a two-week course in South Korea. He manufactured errors that left numerous sufferers unable to walk or work.

He had been advised by a London judge in 2001 that his profession was “in ruins”, when he was discovered guilty of creating the death of Isatu Bangura, who suffered a cardiac arrest after he injected her with sedatives and failed to keep track of her issue while she had dental function accomplished.

New Jersey state prosecutors argued that Kaul had performed complicated surgical treatment with “flagrant disregard” for his inadequate qualifications, citing the circumstances of 11 individuals who claimed to have suffered mistreatment at his hands amongst 2005 and 2012.

Judge Howard Solomon agreed in his determination in December that Kaul “never need to have performed any spinal surgeries,” and had engaged in “gross negligence, gross malpractice and gross incompetence” by operating on individuals “without enough training, expertise and competence”.

The case raised fresh considerations about the safety of ambulatory surgical centres (ASCs) like Kaul’s, which supply quicker and much less expensive operations than classic hospitals but are not topic to the identical inspections and checks, and have been criticised by patient watchdogs.

In 2012 New Jersey governor Chris Christie vetoed a bill passed by state legislators that would have ensured all ASCs had been regulated, partly on the grounds that it would value as well a lot for his administration to inspect them.

Kaul presently owed a former patient practically $ 1m following a profitable lawsuit, as properly as hefty unpaid tax payments. He is also becoming sued by Geico, a major insurance coverage organization, which claims he improperly billed it for surgeries. Kaul denies the allegation.

“The state proved its allegations and we’re pleased the Board has enacted the Court’s recommendation of licence revocation,” stated Eric Kanefsky, the director of the New Jersey lawyer general’s division of buyer affairs, said of the board’s selection.

“Dr Kaul’s actions are an affront to medical professionals who commit many years learning and education so they can effectively care for their sufferers.”

Surgeon struck off in Britain banned from practising and fined in New Jersey