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Tesla Forced To Pay Whistleblower Who Exposed Critical Security And Privacy Flaws

  • Lukasz Krupski had been labeled a “disgruntled former employee” by the carmaker.
  • Information uncovered by the whistleblower revealed several Autopilot issues.
  • Krupski sued Tesla for lost wages and emotional distress, seeking a total of €250,000.

In a significant legal ruling, a Norwegian court has ordered Tesla to pay a former employee more than €10,000 (equal to $10,500 at current exchange rates) in damages and cover upwards of €170,000 ($178,000) in legal fees after finding the company had violated his rights as a whistleblower.

The case stems from the actions of Lukasz Krupski, a former service technician at Tesla’s plant in Drammen, Norway. Krupski had provided more than 100 gigabytes of data to German publication Handelsblatt, revealing security flaws and a series of data protection problems. It included information related to problems with the Autopilot system and Tesla’s struggles to bring the Cybertruck to the market.

His leak also revealed that private information about Tesla customers and employees was publicly available, as were contracts with business partners, design plans, and confidential presentations.

Read: Fired Tesla Technician Turns From Company Hero To Enemy Number 1

Six days after the data was made public, Tesla’s reaction was swift and aggressive. At the company’s behest, Norwegian authorities raided Krupski’s apartment, seizing his computer, phone, and storage devices. Tesla quickly branded him a “disgruntled former employee.” In retaliation, Krupski filed a lawsuit against Tesla, seeking compensation for lost wages, emotional distress, and the unlawful treatment he endured.

Court Rules in Favor of the Whistleblower

Earlier this week, the Norwegian District Court of Buskerud ruled in favor of the whistleblower, the Handelsblatt reports, confirming that he is entitled to compensation, although he won’t get the full €250,000 (~$262,000) that he had been seeking.

 Tesla Forced To Pay Whistleblower Who Exposed Critical Security And Privacy Flaws

“A Victory for Transparency”

Despite the partial financial settlement, Krupski viewed the court’s ruling as a personal victory. “Tesla made my life hell after I raised concerns about serious safety issues within the company,” he said. “I tried to act in good faith, but instead I was faced with retaliation, demotion and isolation. Even if I didn’t get everything I had hoped for, this decision is an important victory for transparency. Now I want to concentrate on looking forward and rebuilding my life.”

Before becoming Tesla’s enemy number one, Krupski had been recognized by none other than Elon Musk. In March 2019, while helping deliver new vehicles to customers in Norway, Krupski saved the day by disconnecting a modified charger from under a Model 3 that had caught fire, preventing a potentially devastating blaze.

Musk emailed him directly saying “Congratulations for saving the day,” but when Krupski replied back expressing safety concerns, he started to draw the ire of his superiors, who claimed he no longer had a future at the automaker. He was fired in 2022 over accusations of poor time management and of being a bad influence on other staff, but also for taking photographs on-site, which is against company policy.

 Tesla Forced To Pay Whistleblower Who Exposed Critical Security And Privacy Flaws

Tesla Sued After Woman Claims Locking Flaw Let Attacker Enter Model Y

  • A California woman alleges Tesla’s locking system allowed an assailant to access her vehicle.
  • The plaintiff claims says she locked her car while she waited inside the cabin at a charging station.
  • Before she could finish charging, an assailant entered despite indications the car was locked.

Tesla is currently facing a wide array of legal challenges. While the company works to expand the adoption of robotaxis and continues to be investigated over concerns about Autopilot, it is now dealing with a lawsuit brought by a California woman. She alleges that a flaw in Tesla’s locking system allowed an assailant to enter her vehicle and attack her.

The plaintiff, identified only as Jane Doe in court filings from the Golden State, claims that Tesla doors can still be opened from the outside, even when the car is locked via the Tesla app.

According to the filing, the incident occurred at the Galleria at Tyler mall while Jane Doe was charging her Tesla Model Y. After plugging in the vehicle, she moved to the passenger seat to take a nap while the EV charged. Upon getting in, she used her Tesla app to lock the car. Evidently, the wing mirrors folded in and she saw an icon indicating that the car was locked.

More: Judge Rules Tesla Phantom Braking Lawsuit Can Proceed

Before she woke up, a person identified in the lawsuit as Jabari Marquis shook the car from the outside and then entered through the driver’s side door. While the woman believed the vehicle was locked, the exterior door handle allegedly worked as normal.

She claims that Marquis proceeded to assault her and she called 911, attempting to alert them to her predicament by saying things like “I hate this Mall, it’s full of rapists,” and “The charging stations are so slow.” The call apparently lasted for approximately seven minutes and ultimately police arrived and intervened.

The lawsuit accuses Tesla of failing to secure the vehicle’s doors from the outside and for not alerting occupants about the situation either. Interestingly, the suit isn’t solely against Tesla as the woman also includes the site of the assault, Galleria At Tyler. Her council claims that the mall failed to provide adequate security. Finally, the defendant, Mr. Marquis, is also facing legal consequences here as the woman is suing for damages related to assault and battery.

Porsche Hit With Class Action Over Taycan Batteries That Could Catch Fire

  • The lawsuit claims that Porsche should replace all defective battery packs.
  • It also asserts that the automaker has known about battery faults since at least February 2020.
  • In early 2025, Porsche will install an on-board diagnostic system to detect battery anomalies.

Two months after Porsche issued a widespread recall of 2020-2024 Taycan models across the United States for a battery defect, a class action lawsuit has been filed against the automaker and is seeking a jury trial in relation to the battery fault.

The lawsuit, filed by Gibbs Law Group, names plaintiff Miodrag Kukrika and alleges Porsche has failed to disclose or adequately repair a “dangerous and widespread” defect in the EV’s battery pack. The law group are seeking to represent a class of owners and lessees of impacted Taycan models and claims Porsche has known about the issue since at least February 2020 after a vehicle fire at a home in Florida.

Read: Porsche Taycan Recall Means You’re Stuck Charging To 80% Until 2025

“Porsche investigated the incident and since then, has learned about several other fires and about numerous owner complaints about the Battery Defect,” the class action states. 

In the recall notice issued in early October, Porsche said the high-voltage batteries of certain Taycans could short circuit, leading to fires. Owners have been asked to cap charging of their vehicles to 80% until early 2025, when an on-board diagnostic system will be installed to detect battery module anomalies. Vehicles shown to have battery faults will have their packs replaced.

 Porsche Hit With Class Action Over Taycan Batteries That Could Catch Fire

This class action lawsuit says the automaker hasn’t addressed the “root cause of the defect” and should repair or replace all of the defective batteries. Kukrika alleges Porsche is guilty of fraudulent concealment and omission, breach of the implied warranty of merchantability, and negligent misrepresentation/omission. He is seeking a jury trial and has requested injunctive relief alongside an award of punitive, compensatory, treble, and exemplary damages for all class members.

“The Battery Defect presents an unreasonable safety risk to drivers and passengers of the Class Vehicles and to people in residential homes and other structures where the vehicles are parked or near,” the lawsuit adds.

The class action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on November 29.

 Porsche Hit With Class Action Over Taycan Batteries That Could Catch Fire

Man Sues For $745,000 After Crash With ‘Self-Driving’ Tesla Blows Through Stop Sign

  • Michael Ward suffered spinal and facial fractures after being hit by a self-driving Tesla.
  • Now he wants $100k for past and future medical bills, plus $600k for pain and suffering.
  • Oregon has seen multiple lawsuits tied to self-driving cars and related technology failures.

A man in Portland is seeking $745,000 after his car was T-boned by a Tesla that was allegedly on self-driving mode and ran a stop sign on November 25, 2023. The incident is now spotlighting the contentious debate around the reliability of autonomous vehicle technology and the role of driver responsibility when using it.

According to the lawsuit seen by Oregon Live, while driving through the intersection of Oregon 212 and Southeast Sunnyside Road, Michael Ward’s 2021 Hyundai was hit by the Tesla, even though Ward was moving with the flow of traffic and had the right-of-way. The crash caused significant injuries, leaving Ward with facial and spinal fractures, along with extensive dental damage.

He has filed a lawsuit against the driver of the Tesla, Kgoc Phuong Anh Dinh, accusing her of negligence by “unreasonably relying upon autonomous vehicle technology.”

More: US Govt Investigating Tesla’s Full-Self Driving After Four Crashes, One Fatal

Ward’s Hyundai was totaled in the crash, and he was transported to OHSU Hospital for treatment of his injuries. In the lawsuit, he is seeking $100,000 to cover past and future medical expenses, $40,000 in lost income, $5,000 for personal property damaged in the crash, and a substantial $600,000 for pain and suffering.

Despite the Tesla allegedly being in self-driving mode, the carmaker is not named as a defendant in the case. Tesla explicitly states in its guidelines that drivers must remain alert and ready to take control when using Autopilot or Full Self-Driving (FSD) features, a point that complicates cases like this one.

Other Tesla Self-Driving Lawsuits in Oregon

Oregon Live notes that other self-driving-related lawsuits have been filed across the state. Earlier this year, a separate lawsuit was filed by another Oregon man after his Tesla Model 3, allegedly operating in Full Self-Driving mode, steered itself into a curb and damaged one of its wheels.

He sued Tesla for the cost of a replacement wheel, $713, and sought reimbursement for the $6,000 he had paid to purchase the FSD system. While the court ruled that Tesla must pay for the damaged wheel, it declined to order the company to refund the cost of the software.

 Man Sues For $745,000 After Crash With ‘Self-Driving’ Tesla Blows Through Stop Sign
The intersection where Michael Ward’s Hyundai was T-boned by a Tesla (Google Maps)

In 2021, a man sued a Tesla driver and the car manufacturer after the car apparently switched into self-driving mode and slammed into him. The man had sought $342,000. The case was ultimately settled for an undisclosed amount, soon after it was revealed the insurance company for the Tesla had disposed of or lost the wrecked vehicle before it could be analyzed.

Related: Tesla Allegedly In “Self-Drive” Mode Slams Into Parked Police Car

In the same year, another Tesla owner filed a $250,000 lawsuit against Tesla alleging that his Model S, which was in Autopilot mode, misread road conditions and made a 180-degree turn, slamming into a barrier after it hydroplaned on standing water. The man, Ranjan Lamichhane, said that he stopped pursuing damages after Tesla managed to boot his lawsuit out of federal court and sent him into arbitration, where he felt out-powered.

 Man Sues For $745,000 After Crash With ‘Self-Driving’ Tesla Blows Through Stop Sign

Judge Rules Tesla Phantom Braking Lawsuit Can Proceed

  • Hundreds of complaints have been filed with the NHTSA about Tesla models that can unexpectedly brake automatically.
  • The judge dismissed claims that the EV maker had been charging excessive car insurance premiums.

Over the years, many Tesla owners have reported complaints about “phantom braking”—a phenomenon where the car suddenly and inexplicably applies the brakes, often with no apparent hazard in sight. Now, a lawsuit against Tesla over these alleged “phantom braking” issues has been allowed to move forward by a US District Judge in Chicago.

The suit accuses Tesla of concealing a defect in its forward collision monitoring system, which is said to trigger abrupt and unnecessary braking without any real danger present. While some parts of the lawsuit have been dismissed, the central claim regarding the phantom braking issue remains very much alive.

The lawsuit was originally filed by Tesla Model 3 owner Joshua Santiago in 2023. He claimed that the forward collision monitoring system used by Tesla is defective and can suddenly activate when there’s no actual danger or collision risk, described as ‘phantom braking.’ The lawsuit also alleged that Tesla was charging excessive car insurance premiums because of the reportedly defective collision monitoring system.

Read: Tesla Settles Lawsuit Against Rivian Over Claims It Stole Trade Secrets

Late last week, US District Judge Georgia Alexakis ruled to narrow the lawsuit’s scope but upheld the central claim about phantom braking. Tesla had moved to have the entire case dismissed, but the judge’s decision ensures the defect allegations will be heard in court.

The lawsuit alleges that Tesla had known about the alleged defect as early as 2015, but failed to inform customers about it. A whistleblower’s report asserts Tesla had recorded “139 cases of unintentional emergency braking,” and “383 reported phantom stops resulting from false collision warnings.” Hundreds of complaints regarding the faulty system have also been made to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Tesla regularly deploys over-the-air software updates, but the plaintiff argues these efforts have failed to resolve the problem. Santiago claims he “would not have purchased his vehicle…had he been aware” of the defect”, positioning the case as a matter of consumer transparency.

Insurance Premium Claims on Hold

While the phantom braking allegations proceed, Judge Alexakis dismissed claims regarding Tesla’s inflated insurance premiums because of the allegedly faulty collision monitoring system. However, plaintiffs have been granted permission to file an amended complaint to revive those claims should they gather additional evidence.

Tesla, for its part, has previously denied claims that it was aware of phantom braking issues in its popular electric vehicles.

 Judge Rules Tesla Phantom Braking Lawsuit Can Proceed

Egg suppliers battle over pricing, claims of bird flu outbreak

14 October 2024 at 10:00
carton of eggs

A carton of chicken eggs. (Photo by Jared Strong/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

A group of Midwest egg suppliers are embroiled in litigation over egg prices, with an Iowa company arguing it shouldn’t be forced to disclose its pricing information.

A central element of the case is whether a fabricated claim of a bird flu outbreak is to blame for one supplier raising its egg prices and canceling orders.

Grand Prairie Foods of South Dakota, which supplies hotels and convenience stores with breakfast sandwiches, is suing Echo Lake Foods, a Wisconsin company that manufactures precooked egg entrees, for breach of contract and unjust enrichment.

At the same time, a third company, Oskaloosa Food Products in Iowa, is attempting to quash a subpoena for company records related to its pricing.

Court records indicate Grand Prairie has purchased egg patties and other products from Echo Lake since at least 2005. In early 2022, Echo Lake’s supplier of raw eggs experienced an outbreak of avian influenza, commonly known as the bird flu, resulting in the destruction of more than 6 million laying hens.

Echo Lake then notified its customers, including Grand Prairie, that existing purchase orders for egg patties and other egg products would have to be revised to reflect increased pricing.

According to Grand Prairie’s lawsuit, Echo Lake Foods then doubled the price of its egg patties, and while the nationwide market price of eggs eventually decreased, Echo Lake allegedly refused to reduce the price of its egg patties.

Court exhibits show that on July 12, 2022, Grand Prairie’s president, Kurt Loudenback, e-mailed Echo Lake’s director of national sales, Justin Milbradt, writing, “Justin – I don’t understand why we continue to see these high prices,” noting that Grand Prairie could purchase eggs from other suppliers at a significantly lower price. “I’m sure you buy WAY more eggs than we do,” Loudenback added.

The next day, Loudenback emailed Echo Lake again, proposing that his company sell tankers of whole eggs to Echo Lake for $1.28 per pound – significantly less than the $3.60 per pound Echo Lake was charging Grand Prairie for its finished egg products.

“Just trying to get your eggs at (a) lower price to lower my cost,” Loudenback explained in his email. “$3.60 seems pretty high for a $1.28 input cost.”

The two companies eventually agreed on an arrangement whereby Grand Prairie would sell two truckloads of raw eggs each week to Echo Lake. Court records show Echo Lake agreed to pay a “premium price,” $1.70 per pound, for the raw eggs from Grand Prairie. In return, the records show, Echo Lake would sell the finished, processed eggs back to Grand Prairie for $3.60 per pound — the same price Grand Prairie had previously objected to as being out of line with market prices.

Within a few months, however, Grand Prairie told Echo Lake that an avian flu outbreak had affected its egg supplier, Oskaloosa Food Products, and so Grand Prairie would have to raise its prices. A few weeks later, Grand Prairie said it was unable to find a new supplier and wouldn’t be able to fulfill Echo Lake’s orders.

Echo Lake then began acquiring eggs elsewhere – but at a higher price. In court documents, Echo Lake says Grand Prairie’s failure to deliver eggs at the promised price cost Echo Lake more than $1.1 million.

Court exhibits show that in an effort to offset the added expense, Echo Lake withheld payments to Grand Prairie totaling $567,460. Grand Prairie then sued Echo Lake to recover the $567,460 it was owed, alleging breach of contract and unjust enrichment.

Echo Lake countersued, claiming Grand Prairie had breached the contract.

Was company’s bird-flu claim false?

Recently filed court records show that attorneys for Echo Lake are questioning Grand Prairie’s stated rationale for its price hike and the eventual cancellation of orders – an avian flu outbreak that affected the Oskaloosa plant.

In July, an Echo Lake attorney wrote to a lawyer for Oskaloosa Food Products, stating that while “Grand Prairie claims it had no choice other than to cancel the remaining purchase orders because of an outbreak of avian influenza among its suppliers, including Oskaloosa,” an independent investigation had concluded Oskaloosa reported no such outbreak at that time, despite legal requirements for such reporting.

In addition, the lawyer wrote, the chief operating officer of the Oskaloosa plant had confirmed for Echo Lake that “Oskaloosa did not experience the Al outbreak described by Grand Prairie.”

In late May, Echo Lake subpoenaed Oskaloosa Food Products to obtain access to the contract between Grand Prairie and the Oskaloosa company.

Oskaloosa has since filed a motion to quash that subpoena, arguing the agreement includes trade secrets. Echo Lake has responded in court by arguing that the price of eggs is not a trade secret.

That issue is now before a judge in the U.S. District Court for Southern Iowa, while the underlying lawsuit between Grand Prairie and Echo Lake continues to move forward in South Dakota federal court.

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and X.

Federal appeals court weighs fate of DACA program

11 October 2024 at 10:05
DACA protest

Protesters in front of the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol urged Congress to pass the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, in December 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — After concluding oral arguments Thursday, a panel of federal judges will determine the fate of a program that has shielded from deportation more than half a million immigrants lacking permanent legal status who came into the United States as children.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a 12-year program that was meant to be temporary during the Obama administration while Congress passed a pathway to citizenship, has been caught in a years-long battle after the Trump administration moved to end the program.

Greisa Martinez Rosas, the executive director for the youth immigration organization United We Dream, said in a statement that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit should reject the “baseless lawsuit” brought by Texas and other states.

“DACA recipients have withstood over a decade of attacks by violent, anti-immigrant officials and have kept DACA alive through their courage and resilience,” Rosas said. “I urge President (Joe) Biden and every elected official to treat this moment with the urgency it requires and to take bold and swift action to protect all immigrants once and for all. ”

A panel of three judges on the appeals court heard oral arguments on behalf of the program from the Justice Department, the state of New Jersey and an immigration rights group, all advocating the legality of the Biden administration’s 2021 final rule to codify the program.

Last year the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas declared it unlawful and allowed current DACA recipients to continue renewing their status, but barred new applicants.

The Justice Department and the others asked the appeals court judges to consider three things. They are challenging whether the state of Texas has standing to show it was harmed by DACA; whether the regulation is lawful within presidential authority; and whether the trial court had the authority to place a nationwide injunction on the program.

The judges are Jerry Edwin Smith, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan; Edith Brown Clement, appointed by former President George W. Bush; and Stephen A. Higginson, appointed by former President Barack Obama.

The 5th Circuit in New Orleans covers Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, and typically delivers conservative rulings.

Joseph N. Mazzara, arguing on behalf of the state of Texas, said that DACA harmed the state because there is a “pocketbook cost to Texas with regard to education and medical care.”

He said that the end of DACA would likely lead recipients to self-deport and “return to their country of origin,” which he argued would alleviate Texas’ financial costs.

It could take weeks or months for a ruling, which is likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the fate of DACA may be left to the incoming administration.

In a statement on Thursday’s oral arguments, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, slammed the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, for “targeting young people who grew up pledging allegiance to America.”

“Regardless of the outcome of this case, we should be very clear about what is at stake in this election,” she said. “Donald Trump tried to end DACA once, and if given the chance, he will not rest until he is successful.”

The Supreme Court in 2020 overturned the Trump administration’s decision to end the program, but on the grounds that the White House didn’t follow the proper procedure. The high court did not make a decision whether the program itself was unlawful or not.

States’ standing

Brian Boynton argued on behalf of the Biden administration.

He argued that the eight states that sued the Biden administration along with Texas have no standing because they did not demonstrate any harm caused by DACA.

Those other states challenging DACA include Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Mississippi.

“Any person in the state of Texas, citizen or noncitizen, is entitled to precisely the same types of services, emergency health care services and public K through 12 education,” he said. “It’s not a situation where only someone with DACA is entitled to the services.”

Boynton asked the panel to uphold U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s policy of keeping DACA in place for current recipients – about 535,000 people – if the court decides to strike the program down while DACA continues to undergo the appeals process.

Hanen ruled in 2021 that DACA was unlawful, determining that the Obama administration exceeded its presidential authority in creating the program. He allowed current DACA recipients to remain in the program, but barred the federal government from accepting new applicants.

It’s estimated that there are 95,000 applicants that are blocked due to that order, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data. 

The Biden administration then went through the formal rulemaking, which Hanen reviewed and again deemed unlawful, prompting the appeal before the three judges.

Boynton argued against a nationwide injunction on DACA recipients being able to apply for the program.

“With respect to the propriety of nationwide injunctions, it’s very clear that an injunction should be narrowly crafted to provide a remedy only to the party that is injured, and here that would be Texas,” he said.

Nina Perales, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, argued that Texas in its legal arguments is including spending costs for students in K-12 schools who cannot be DACA recipients because those recipients are over 18 and have aged out of the program.

Perales addressed the health care argument from Texas and said Texas did not show the incurred health costs of just DACA recipients.

“Texas points to health care spending on the entire undocumented immigrant population, as Texas estimates it,” she said. “Not DACA recipients.”

“It’s been widely understood that DACA recipients overall provide a net benefit to their state,” she added.

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Anti-abortion researchers take legal action over retracted studies cited in FDA case

8 October 2024 at 10:15
pills and video medical conference

Medication abortion has become the most common method of abortion since the 2022 Dobbs decision ended the federal right to abortion. (Getty Images)

Researchers whose anti-abortion-funded studies were used to argue for restrictions on medication abortion — and then were retracted on methodological grounds — are now taking legal action against academic publisher Sage, which pulled their papers in February.

Represented by conservative law firms Consovoy McCarthy and Alliance Defending Freedom, the latter of which sued the Food and Drug Administration over abortion drugs in 2022, the researchers claim Sage’s retractions were unjustified and politically motivated and have led to “enormous and incalculable harm” to their reputations. They asked the Ventura County Superior Court in California to compel Sage to arbitrate with the researchers.

“Sage punished these highly respected and credentialed scientists simply because they believe in preserving life from conception to natural death. These actions have caused irreparable harm to the authors of these articles, and we are urging Sage to come to the arbitration table — as it is legally bound to do — rescind the retractions and remedy the reputational damage the researchers have suffered at the hands of abortion lobbyists,” said ADF senior counsel Phil Sechler in the recent announcement.

A representative for Sage declined to comment on the pending litigation.

A representative for the anti-abortion think tank Charlotte Lozier Institute, which employs the petitioning researchers, declined to comment. The nonprofit serves as the research arm of the influential Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which works to elect federal and state anti-abortion lawmakers.

The three studies at the center of the dispute were published in the journal “Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” between 2019 and 2022. Two of them featured prominently in a federal lawsuit aimed at restricting abortion pills, which the U.S. Supreme Court rejected this summer but continues to make its way through the lower courts.

States Newsroom was the first to report last year that Sage had opened an investigation after pharmaceutical sciences professor Chris Adkins contacted the journal with concerns that the researchers had misrepresented their findings. In the 2021 paper, the researchers looked at Medicaid data in 17 states between 1999 and 2015 and tracked patients who had had a procedural or a medication abortion and counted each time they went to an emergency department in the 30 days following those abortions. Their finding that emergency room visits within 30 days following a medication abortion increased 500% from 2002 to 2015 was frequently cited by plaintiffs and judges in the FDA case and used to conclude that the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone is dangerous. But Adkins and other public health experts told States Newsroom that the researchers inflated their findings, and appeared to conflate all emergency department visits with adverse events.

These concerns prompted Sage to re-examine the peer review process and to identify that one of the initial peer reviewers was an associate scholar with the Charlotte Lozier Institute. The publisher then enlisted a statistician and two reproductive health experts to newly peer review all three articles.

“Following Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, we made this decision with the journal’s editor because of undeclared conflicts of interest and after expert reviewers found that the studies demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor that invalidates or renders unreliable the authors’ conclusions,” Sage said announcing the retractions, which notes that the experts found that the papers had “fundamental problems with the study design and methodology,” “unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions,” “material errors in the authors’ analysis of the data,” and “misleading presentations of the data.”

In a petition to compel arbitration filed late last week, the studies’ lead author James Studnicki and nine co-authors argue that Sage has delayed arbitration in violation of California contract law. They say they’ve had difficulty publishing new research since the retractions. As examples, the petition notes that in March a free online archive and distribution server for unpublished, non-peer-reviewed manuscripts refused to post one of the petitioners’ manuscripts and that in April a journal rejected the same manuscript, “citing similar pretextual reasons that HSRME used in its retraction.”

“These rejections are just the tip of the iceberg but reveal the enormous and incalculable harm that Sage’s retraction has inflicted on the Authors’ reputations and their ability to publish research and scholarship,” reads the court petition. “As scientists, the Authors’ credibility is their lifeblood, but Sage has destroyed the Authors’ hard-earned professional reputations.”

Studnicki, Charlotte Lozier’s vice president and director of data analytics, was on the editorial board of “Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology” until last fall, but the journal’s editor-in-chief dismissed him after the journal and Sage decided to retract the papers. The blog Retraction Watch reports that the journal is no longer accepting new submissions.

Medication abortion has become the most common method since the 2022 Dobbs decision ended the federal right to abortion.

Despite claims by the Charlotte Lozier Institute that medication abortion is unsafe, when administered at 9 weeks gestation or less, the FDA-approved regimen has a more than 99% completion rate, a 0.4% risk of major complications, and around 30 reported associated deaths over 22 years. Common symptoms include heavy bleeding and cramping, diarrhea, and nausea, and sometimes medical intervention is necessary to avoid infection. ProPublica recently reported on two women in Georgia who suffered rare complications of medication abortion, but whose deaths were ruled preventable and were attributed to the state’s near-total abortion ban.

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