December 19, 2006

Eighty out of 123 products liability suits brought so far over Bausch & Lomb contact lens solution infections have been consolidated in a federal court in South Carolina before Judge David C. Norton. Though there have been only 300 infections tracked worldwide out of 5 million users, plaintiffs' lawyers claim that they will bring a thousand suits.

Federal health officials have concluded that MoistureLoc had "unique properties" that may have contributed to the outbreak, but said the solution was not contaminated. A study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that the outbreak "may have been caused by a complex and undetermined interaction" between MoistureLoc, fusarium and, possibly, the lens case or contact lens itself.

(Ben Rand, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and Ben Dobbin, AP, "Cases vs. B&L start to move", Dec. 14).