Pharmaceutical Drug and Medical Device Injuries
Today’s pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices claim to cure diseases and fix medical conditions that were previously considered untreatable. Unfortunately, these drugs and devices sometimes cause serious bodily injury or death. Drug and device manufacturers are often legally responsible to pay for your injuries. A personal injury lawyer can help you get financial compensation if you or a loved one has been harmed by a defective drug or medical device.
Jacobson Injury Lawyers can provide a same-day consultation regarding any drug and device injury. Below are links to additional information on select drug and device lawsuits that we anticipate will be helpful for many injured claimants.
Defective Drugs
We frequently learn about major Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recalls or new warnings on popular and widely used medications. These are the same medications the FDA previously deemed “safe and effective” after substantial drug company testing and reporting. These recalls and added warnings often concern serious injuries such as cancer and death. A product that is defective is actionable by law, and you may be entitled to compensation for your pharmaceutical drug injury.
Pharmaceutical drug injuries may be actionable on the following grounds:
- Design Defect – The drug was manufactured as intended but poses an unreasonable risk to consumers because the drug itself is unreasonably dangerous when compared to the benefits and alternative drugs or therapies already available on the market.
- Failure to Warn – The manufacturer knew or should have known that the drug contained an unreasonable risk of harm but failed to warn doctors and patients. Had the doctor and patient been warned, a different drug or an alternative therapy would have been used.
- Manufacturing Defect – The drug is made dangerous by flaws in the way it is manufactured. One of the most common manufacturing defects with medication is when contaminants and other harmful impurities taint large batches of drugs and render them unsafe for consumption.
The attorneys at Jacobson Injury Lawyers can assist with any defective drug case. Our attorneys have extensive knowledge regarding defective pharmaceutical drug law and can assist with any bad drug claim. Jacobson Injury Lawyers have provided additional information on the following bad pharmaceutical drug cases:
If you have suffered harm as a result of taking medication, contact an attorney from Jacobson Injury Lawyers today. Our experienced and knowledgeable attorneys provide a fair and impartial case assessment free of charge. If you qualify, our lawyers will build a case, file your claim and fight for your right to be compensated for your bad drug injury.
Defective Medical Devices
Medical devices can range from simple devices like bandages, thermometers, and dental floss to complex devices like implantable artificial heart valves, joint replacements, and pacemakers. Every year thousands of people are injured by defective medical devices. These defective devices sometimes require surgery to be removed and then require another surgery to implant a properly functioning medical device. And additional medical treatment may be required to treat the harm caused by the device. On top of all of that, you are likely to experience pain and suffering on a level that makes living a normal life challenging, if not impossible.
Medical devices can be defective in the same way as medications—they can be poorly designed, lack sufficient warnings or instructions, or be incorrectly manufactured. The attorneys at Jacobson Injury Lawyers can assist with any defective medical device case. We are knowledgeable about many types of medical device defects and can provide you with the representation you need to be compensated for your harm. Jacobson Injury Lawyers are primarily focusing on the following defective medical device claims:
If you have suffered harm from a medical device, contact an attorney from Jacobson Injury Lawyers today. Our experienced and knowledgeable attorneys will listen to your case and provide a fair and impartial case assessment free of charge. We will file a claim on your behalf and will help you get the compensation you deserve.
You May Be Entitled to Compensation
People harmed due to defective medications or medical devices may pursue legal claims for monetary damages. Monetary compensation may take many different forms when you are damaged by a bad drug or medical device.
- Medical Expenses – Charges related to your medical care that are connected with the defective drug or device are usually a focus in any drug or medical device case. These primarily include hospital, physician and pharmacy charges. And because many drug and device injuries are long term, some claimants seek future medical expenses that are needed to make a full recovery.
- Other Expenses – These are expenses related to the drug or device injury but not constituting actual medical expenses. For example, someone injured may be entitled to damages to compensate them for the amount spent on the drug or device that caused the injury. And some injured people are required to travel to receive medical treatment or consult with specialists and thus incur added costs associated with transportation, lodging, and meals.
- Lost Wages – Injuries from dangerous drugs and defective medical devices can put you out of work for long periods of time. Victims of bad drugs and tortious medical devices may be entitled to lost wages when they have a successful legal claim.
- Pain and Suffering – Taking a bad drug or using a dangerous medical device often leaves you in substantial pain and causes tremendous suffering. The law provides that you can obtain financial compensation for this pain and suffering.
- Punitive Damages – Companies that intentionally mislead the FDA or otherwise know of the harm but choose not to disclose or stop the harm from occurring can be subject to punitive damages. Punitive damages are calculated to punish the wrongdoer and serve as a deterrent from future wrongful conduct. Sometimes, the penalty for properly punishing a large multinational corporation can be huge – the largest punitive damage award is $145 billion. However, punitive damages are often reduced on appeal, and most drug and device plaintiffs are not awarded punitive damage amounts.
The damage model for each client is unique and impacted by a host of variables. A personal injury lawyer can provide you with an estimate of what your claim may be worth. Call the licensed attorneys at Jacobson Injury Lawyers today for a free case evaluation.
Your Time to File a Claim is Limited – Do Not Delay
When you or a loved one is injured by a bad drug or medical device, you have a limited time to file a claim. The time limit to file a claim is called the statute of limitations. The statute of limitations varies depending on the type of legal claim and the jurisdiction where the claim would be filed. Once the statute of limitations expires, a plaintiff might be barred from filing a lawsuit, regardless of the merits of their claim.
The statute of limitations is different for each state, with some states only allowing one year to file a claim to obtain damages for your drug or device injury. Regardless of how long the statute of limitations allows you to file a claim, it is important to know when your claim needs to be filed. Fortunately, the law often provides you with additional time to pursue a claim if the responsible party or injury is unknown, the claimant is a minor, or the company responsible for the harm fraudulently concealed facts, making it unlikely to discover the source of harm.
Determining the applicable statute of limitations and calculating how long you have to file a claim is fact-intensive and depends on the unique facts of each claim. If you believe you have a drug or device claim it is critical to consult with an attorney as soon as possible to determine the applicable statute of limitations and ensure that your claim is timely filed. As part of Jacobson Injury Lawyers free case evaluation, we will advise you as to the statute of limitation likely applicable to your case. Do not delay and risk losing a valuable claim – contact the attorneys at Jacobson Injury Lawyers today.
About the Drug and Device Claim Process
Many people learn about the connection between a bad drug or defective device and a specific injury from an FDA recall reported on the news, a letter from their doctor or an attorney advertisement. And more often than not, people injured by bad drugs or devices find out about the ability to pursue compensation around the same time. The result is that there is often a large number of lawsuits filed against one single defendant in courts around the country.
To accommodate the large influx of cases filed against a small group of defendants, the federal court system will consolidate the cases in a Multidistrict Litigation (MDL). An MDL is a legal procedure in the United States federal court system designed to efficiently process complex cases that involve multiple plaintiffs across different federal districts who have similar claims against one or more defendants. The goal of an MDL is to consolidate pretrial proceedings, streamline discovery, avoid conflicting rulings, and generally make the legal process more efficient for everyone involved, including the plaintiffs, defendants, and courts. After the MDL is complete, the individual cases are sent back to their original filing location for adjudication.
However, most successful drug and device lawsuits are settled in the MDL, meaning that the cases are not remained (sent back down) to the original court. The lawyers at Jacobson Injury Lawyers understand how drug and device cases are litigated and can provide quality representation regardless of whether the MDL is located. Call Jacobson Injury Lawyers today and speak to a licensed attorney with knowledge about defective drugs and medical devices.
How Do You Prove It?
When a Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) is created, and a large corporate defendant worth billions of dollars appears to be on the hook for billions of dollars in lawsuit payouts, there can be huge quantities of claims. However, in order to obtain compensation for your injury, your attorney is required to connect the bad drug or device with your injury. To do this, the attorney is required to prove both general and specific causation.
General causation regards whether or not the drug or device is capable of causing the claimed injury. Sometimes this question is not too difficult to answer. For example, there have been instances where a drug is tainted with a contaminated ingredient already known to cause a specific injury. However, there are other instances where the pharmaceutical drug is a completely new product. In those cases, an epidemiologist is required to study the product to determine if there is a link between the injury and the drug or device. This can be hard and often the biggest point of contention in any drug or device lawsuit.
Once the attorney establishes that the drug or device causes harm, then the attorney is required to prove that you suffered your injury because you took the drug or device. This is called specific causation. Sometimes, a specific causation is not difficult to answer. For example, people that have been injured by a defective Exactech implant are usually able to prove that they have the defective implant because the implant is clearly detailed in medical records and the type of harm is clearly associated with the defective joint implant. Other times, specific causation is much more difficult to prove. For example, it is more difficult to prove that a popular heartburn medication, even if deemed to be cancerous, caused lung cancer when the injured person smoked cigarettes for twenty years.
The lawyers at Jacobson Injury Lawyers understand both the law and science you need in order to pursue a bad drug or defective medical device claim. Our skilled attorneys will work with you to obtain all the required proof so that you can get the compensation you deserve. There is never a charge to have a consultation with an attorney at Jacobson Injury Lawyers. If you think you have been injured by a pharmaceutical drug or medical device, call Jacobson Injury Lawyers today.
How Much is My Claim Worth?
One of the first questions clients want to know after being qualified for a drug or device lawsuit is how much money their claim is worth. Sometimes, there are existing trial verdicts and published settlements making it easier to safely determine the range of compensation you may receive. Other times, when the case is relatively new, it is very difficult to estimate the amount of damages you may receive for your injury. The amount that you may ultimately receive varies widely based on a large quantity of factors, including the extent of your injury, the ability of the responsible party to pay, and the number of people injured.
Unless there is a global settlement in place, no attorney will know what your case is actually worth. However, the lawyers at Jacobson Injury Lawyers regularly track new settlement amounts and have studied historical verdicts and settlements. Additionally, the lawyers at Jacobson Injury Lawyers have a deep understanding of corporate finance and usually are able to reliably opine on the ability of a defendant to pay your drug or device claim.
Each case is different. And the only way to actually find out the value of your case is to hire an attorney and file a claim or lawsuit. Contact the lawyers at Jacobson Injury Lawyers today for a free case evaluation. We will explain the entire drug and medical device lawsuit process and will evaluate your claim for no charge. And Jacobson Injury Lawyers never charges a fee unless you win or settle your case.
A Common Misconception – FDA “Approval”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves drugs and medical devices for the American public. However, this approval is not a guarantee of safety and effectiveness. First, the FDA is not structured to guarantee results. In fact the FDA does not directly test the drugs or devices before they are allowed to be introduced on the market. Instead, a group of FDA government physicians, statisticians, chemists, pharmacologists, and other scientists review data and labeling that is provided by the pharmaceutical drug or medical device company. Surprisingly, the FDA assumes data a drug or device company provides is correct and complete. This is one of the reasons why one of the most common claims made against drug and device companies is failure to warn. Pharmaceutical drug and medical device companies often manipulate data and in some instances conceal or intentionally misrepresent safety and efficacy data to the FDA. This is one reason why you may see drug and device defendants get hit with large punitive damage amounts.
Contact Jacobson Injury Lawyers Today if You Have Been Harmed by a Drug or Medical Device
At Jacobson Injury Lawyers, we help people obtain compensation after suffering from a serious pharmaceutical drug or medical device injury. Contact us today by phone or email to schedule a free attorney consultation. There is never a charge to consult with a licensed and knowledgeable attorney regarding your pharmaceutical drug or medical device injury case. If you qualify for a drug or device claim, the lawyers at Jacobson Injury Lawyers never charge a fee unless you win your case.