Drug Injury Lawyers

Lawsuits for FDA Recall Drugs

Doctors prescribe medications to help their patients deal with health issues. Every time the patient takes the medicine, they put their trust in the drug companies that make the medication so that they will not be harmed.

However, some pharmaceutical companies violate this trust by selling a prescription medicine that is defective. Oftentimes, the drugmaker knows that they are marketing a dangerous product.

When you have been harmed by a defective medication, you can file a lawsuit to receive financial compensation.

Defective Drug Attorneys Helping Injured Patients and Consumers

The personal injury attorneys at Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC are committed lawyers who help their clients file claims for compensation against pharmaceutical companies who marketed and sold the drugs that harmed them.

Our law firm helps our clients build their drug injury cases by working with them to gather evidence in their case, both scientific and otherwise.

A client can file a dangerous drug injury lawsuit with our law firm today whether you have been injured by prescription drugs or over-the-counter medications (including for health problems like chronic kidney disease).

If you or a loved one was seriously injured or died as a result of dangerous drugs, contact our defective drug injury lawyers for a free consultation.

We handle pharmaceutical product cases on a contingency fee basis where we only receive a legal fee when we are successful in securing financial compensation for you.

Corporate Push to Promote Prescription Drugs to the Market-At the Expense of Consumer Safety

It seems like recalls are happening more often these days. One of the major reasons is that there is a growing awareness of the possibility that drugs may be contaminated with a carcinogen.

In the past several years, these concerns have led to complete recalls of the popular heartburn medicine Zantac and the blood pressure medication Valsartan. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is often slow to act.

These are just two of many prescription medicine recalls that affect clients each year in the United States. Manufacturers often have an ongoing obligation to test their products for their safety. In addition, they must review reports by patients who claim that they have been harmed by meds and suffered from prescription drug injuries.

Manufacturers who follow the law will often pull products from the marketplace if they have received numerous reports from patients who have all suffered a similar type of harm.

Serious side effects should cause a medication maker to at least initiate more testing and investigation, oftentimes leading to a complete recall.

However, drug manufacturers do not always do the right thing to protect customers who put their lives in the hands of the pharmaceutical company.

Some of these drugmakers put profits first and will continue to sell the drugs that make them money, even when there are mounting reports of serious harm to patients and clients. These companies either do not want to know the truth or try to hide it because they want to continue making money by selling bad drugs.

Sometimes, the Drug Administration FDA may step in and order their own recall. However, patients cannot always rely on this to save them from harm. To an extent, the FDA relies on industry to test its own product. Yet, the FDA will usually order recalls in more serious cases.

Patients Can File Dangerous Drug Lawsuits Similar to Other Product Liability Cases

Patients who have been harmed by defective drugs that have been recalled can file a lawsuit to recover financial compensation. These are a type of product liability lawsuits.

When it comes to drugs, some of these settlements and jury awards can be large. This is because of the large amount of harm that defective recalled drugs can do to patients.

When clients file a defective medicine lawsuit, they will be entitled to both economic and non-economic damages. These are intended to put you in the same position as if the injury never happened.

Here are some of what you can recover in a dangerous medication civil case:

• Medical bills (past and future)
• Lost wages
• Rehab care
• Medical expenses
• Pain and suffering
• Emotional distress
• Lost consortium
• Punitive damages
• Wrongful death

As you can see, these damages can add up for clients. It is hard for us to give you an average settlement for recalled drugs. It all depends on how badly the clients were hurt.

How Does a Drug Injury Lawsuit Work?

The first step that you would take towards filing a defective medication lawsuit is hiring an attorney. The lawyers at Rosenfeld Injury Attorneys have years of experience in handling dangerous medicine cases and can help you.

You would work with your lawyer starting from the moment when you form an attorney-client relationship.

Your attorney would get to know the facts of your case. They would draft a complaint on your behalf and file it with the court before the statute of limitations expires. This would start your flawed prescription drug lawsuit.

The process takes some time. You can expect that a defective lawsuit will take years.

Your case will need to go through the discovery process where your attorney tries to get relevant documents and information from the drug company that can help prove your case.

In cases involving recalls, chances are that your case will be a part of something called multidistrict litigation where the plaintiffs all work together during discovery.

Your attorney will also be working with scientific and medical experts to make your points that the medicine was defective. Some cases will settle before they go to trial. However, other cases will end up in front of the jury and you should discuss this in consultation with them.

What You Need to Prove to Win a Defective Drug Lawsuit

A defective medicine lawsuit is like any other product liability case. You need to establish that there was a defect that made the medication unreasonably dangerous.

In general, there are three different ways that you can prove that a drug was defective:

• There was a design defect in the medicine that caused side effects or injuries
• There was a manufacturing defect that made it dangerous
• There was a marketing defect that failed to warn users of particular side effects

In all of these cases, it is not enough to show that there was a defect. You must prove that the medicine was unreasonably dangerous. After this, you must show that dangerous drugs were the cause of your injuries.

In order to reach this point, you will likely need to work with medical and scientific experts. They will need to testify that the medicine is defective. You will need a law firm who knows how to work with these experts to get results.

In addition, your lawyer or firm will need to engage in extensive discovery to learn what the company knew when they were selling and designing these medications.

In many dangerous drug cases, an attorney is able to obtain evidence that the company knew all along that the product they were selling was dangerous, yet they continued to market it.

Your Legal Rights in Drug Injury Cases

All of these steps will take time and effort. Defective medication cases can take years to prosecute before the defendant is even at the point where they are willing to settle the case with the firm.
Above, we mentioned two large major recalls of popular medications. Here are some larger recalls in recent years:

• Vioxx-140,000 patients and $5 billion in settlement.
• Fen-Phen-50,000 lawsuits with over $20 billion in damages.
• Baycol-700,000 patients and $1 billion in settlement.
• Diethylstilbestrol - $42 million awarded to just 11 women.

If you are successful in your dangerous medicine recall case with your firm and personal injury attorneys, the size of your settlement or jury award may vary.

What to Do When Filing a Drug Recall Lawsuit

If you have recently learned that you have taken a pharmaceutical product that has been recalled, you should do the following:

• Continue to monitor your own medical condition regularly, even if you do not feel any symptoms or notice injury.
• If you feel any side effects of the medication, make sure that you see a doctor immediately and begin to document the issue with your medical records.
• If you have been injured in any way, gather your medical records and any other documentation of your injuries.
• Keep track of any damages or expenses that are related to your injuries.
• See a personal injury lawyer immediately. Your ability to file a lawsuit will depend on whether your complaint is submitted to the court within the applicable statute of limitations. Many people simply do not know how long they have to file a lawsuit.

Drug Recall Frequently Asked Questions