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Johnson & Johnson is settling a series of legal claims and lawsuits alleging that its now-discontinued hysterectomy device harmed women by spreading an undetected hidden cancer, according to court documents and plaintiff lawyers with knowledge of the settlements. An estimated 100 cases have either been filed—or readied for lawsuits—against J&J’s Ethicon unit related to a device known as the laparoscopic power morcellator, said Paul Pennock, a plaintiff lawyer and co-lead counsel on the steering committee for consolidated litigation under way in a Kansas City, Kan., federal court. (Levitz, 3/18)

The Food and Drug Administration is striving to assess the scope of the danger from medical devices that sometimes produce erroneous readings of how quickly patients’ blood tends to clot when they are taking anticoagulant medicines such as warfarin. The small mobile devices, used in patients’ homes and in doctors’ offices, have malfunctioned in thousands of cases over the years, according to the FDA. (Burton, 3/18)