A Medical Device Daily

Complete Compliance Corp. (doing business as American 3CI; Dallas), a medical waste management company, reported a court ruling in the class-action lawsuit against its controlling stockholder, Stericycle (Lake Forest, Illinois), and other defendants and issued a final judgment approving the terms of the settlement agreement.

In addition, the court issued an order approving allocation of settlement funds.

The court order provides for 60 cents a share to be allocated as consideration for the company common stock transferred to Stericycle by the final judgment and to be paid to class members who held their shares as of March 14, the date of the judgment. The court approved an award of attorneys' fees to counsel for the class of somewhat more than $10.33 million, plus out-of-pocket expenses of $391,385.

The court also approved the payment of $1 million in retention bonuses to 3CI employees and an aggregate of about $75,000 to the class representative and the members of 3CI's special committee of the board.

The balance of the $32.5 million settlement fund will be paid to class members for damages in proportion to the length of time that they held company stock. Class members consist of those who held company common stock on Sept. 30, 1998, or acquired common stock during the class period, Sept. 30, 1998, to Feb. 10, 2005.

All shares of 3CI common stock held by class members were transferred to Stericycle as of March 14. As of Feb. 28, holders of more than 2.5 million shares of 3CI common stock have submitted claims. The shares transferred to Stericycle by the final judgment will enable Stericycle to acquire the remaining shares of 3CI common stock not held by class members by means of a short-form merger.

The judgment is subject to appeal.

The lawsuit, in which a class of certain of the company's minority stockholders and the company are plaintiffs, is pending in the First Judicial District Court, Caddo Parish, Louisiana.

In other legalities:

• Dutch Ophthalmic Research Center (DORC; Zuidland, the Netherlands) reported victory in an opposition procedure at the European Patent Office (Munich) for the patent supporting its Vision Blue product, a contrast fluid, used as an aid by the eye surgeon during cataract surgery.

DORC said that the Vision Blue European patent (“Cataract surgery,“ EP 1 075 285) had been “tied up“ in an opposition procedure, despite the grant patents granted in the U.S. and other countries. It said that rejection of the oppositions “offers the possibility to fight the sales of copies of the Vision Blue product in Europe.“

Vision Blue was first available in vials, but since 2003 has been available in a ready-to-use sterile syringe for optimal dosage, the company said. It was FDA-approved in 2004.

Founded in 1983, DORC develops eye surgery products, especially for vitreoretinal and cataract surgery.

• Another in a series of lawsuits has been filed against several human tissue processing firms and New York funeral homes on behalf of the victims of an alleged body-harvesting scheme.

Filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Kings, the suit represents a Brooklyn, New York, and a Staten Island, New York, resident “and all others similarly situated, whose family members' or loved ones' bodies were illegally harvested of tissue and bone“ without consent.

“The result . . . has been several known, and potentially thousands of unknown, cases of infectious disease in transplant patients,“ according to the suit.

Defendants in the case include the now-defunct Bio-medical Tissue Services (BTS; Fort Lee, New Jersey), along with four of its employees or agents; LMC Tissue Recovery Services ; MCM Tissue Recovery Services , five funeral homes and several individuals.

The law firm of Motley Rice filed the case together with co-counsel Sanford Rubenstein of Rubenstein & Rynecki (Brooklyn).