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Agilent to pay $7 m in civil fraud case

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CIOL Bureau
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SAN FRANCISCO: Agilent Technologies Inc. said on Tuesday that it would pay $7 million to settle a lawsuit in which the government alleged it had sold faulty medical devices, some of which exploded. An Agilent spokeswoman said the company had denied the allegations and any wrongdoing but decided to settle because of the complexity of the case. The settlement would not affect its operations, she said.



Agilent in 2001 sold the division, which produced the devices to Philips Electronics NV. Agilent itself had inherited the division in its 1999 spin-off from Hewlett-Packard Co.



HP owned the division from 1991-1997, when the government said it sold defective medical monitors devices used on patients in operating rooms, intensive care units, as well as in hospital rooms. "The monitors were failing at a higher than expected rate and on occasion failed by exploding with smoke, burning and/or flaming," U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan said in a statement. HP had failed to properly investigate those and other devices, the attorney said.



© Reuters

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