Central DuPage Hospital in Illinois has agreed to a $5.3 million settlement with the husband of a woman who died of a stroke in 2006. The suit claimed to doctors “failed to properly evaluate and treat” the woman in December 2006, which lead to her death. Lawyers for the doctors said the doctors did nothing wrong, but that they settled to “avoid even the small risk of a runaway jury verdict.”

A Virginia jury has awarded $1.95 million in a lawsuit over the death of a woman less than two days after she received plastic surgery. The woman was sent home an hour after her July 2008 surgery even though she was having respiratory problems, dizziness and fever, the lawsuit claims. She died the next day of aspiration pneumonia. The suit accused the physician and his staff of completely ignoring the woman and her symptoms, which resulted in her death.

A $5.5 million settlement has been reached in a medical malpractice suit brought against Los Angeles County by the family of a girl who suffered head trauma during a cheerleading stunt. The woman was taken to County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center after falling from a human pyramid in August 2007. The lawsuit claims that during her stay, her subdural hematoma grew in size, but doctors failed to order a final CT scan before discharging her. The hematoma caused “massive brain damage, retardation and paralysis,” the suit says. According to the lawsuit, if doctors had performed the CT scan, they would have seen the growing hematoma and operated on it.

The family of a deceased University of North Florida professor will receive a $6.2 million settlement from a local hospital after the professor died during a CT scan. The man had gastric bypass surgery at Shands at the University of Florida hospital in 2002. Days after the surgery, he began having trouble breathing. The suit claims he was sent to have a CT scan of his lungs despite his troubles breathing while lying down.

GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. has agreed to a $1 billion settlement that will cover 800 claims that the company’s drug Paxil causes birth defects. The company paid $2.5 million to a Pennsylvania boy who allegedly suffers from severe heart defects because of Paxil. Glaxo has set aside a total of $2.4 billion to settle various lawsuits involving Paxil and the company’s diabetes drug Avandia

A Florida jury has ordered a local nursing home to pay $114 million to the family of a 76-year-old woman who was allegedly abused while staying at the home, and that abuse led to her death. According to the lawsuit,  the woman suffered “pressure sores, overmedication, malnourishment and dehydration” during her stay at Integrated Health Services in Auburndale, Fla. The jury awarded $14 million in damages and $100 million in punitive damages to Jackson’s family.

Florida ambulance provider EVAC has settled a $5 million lawsuit with a local woman whose son was born two months prematurely while in an ambulance during a transfer between two hospitals. Margaritia Stivers Chess was being transferred from Bert Fish Medical Center to Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children when her son was born in 2004. He now suffers from cerebral palsy. Chess also settled a lawsuit with two doctors involved in the transfer for $1.4 million.

A Connecticut woman has been awarded $1.3 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit filed by her lesbian partner against a local oncologist. The woman filed the lawsuit in January 2006 after she was treated for the wrong form of cancer. In the lawsuit she also sought damages for her longtime partner, whom she had joined in civil union with. A judge initially threw out the woman’s claims, but a Stamford, Conn., jury recently ruled in her favor.

Joe Jackson, Michael Jackson’s father, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his son’s personal physician, alleging that the doctor was negligent in his care for Jackson. Los Angeles prosecutors have charged Conrad Murray with giving Jackson high doses of propofol that may have caused the singer’s death. The lawsuit also claims that Murray tried to hide the fact that he gave Jackson the drugs

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against a Detroit doctor, accusing him of falsely diagnosing hundreds of children with epilepsy in order to increase his pay at Oakwood Hospital & Medical Center.  The lawsuit claims that the doctor improperly diagnosed the children so he could perform a cerain operation on them, as part of his contract with the hospital, netting him extra money in his paycheck.