Fort Lauderdale Dangerous Drug Lawyer

Those who experience injury or death because of a dangerous prescription drug may have a viable case against the pharmaceutical company. To learn more, contact an experienced Fort Lauderdale dangerous drug lawyer who has a record of successfully recovering damages for those harmed by dangerous drugs.

Drug therapies that cause strokes and heart attacks and a host of other dangerous adverse reactions and side effects are on the market. Individuals may be susceptible to some dangers while others are not, because medications affect individuals differently. Get in touch with a skilled Fort Lauderdale injury attorney from Kogan & DiSalvo if you have been affected.

Dangerous Drugs on the Market

Of a long list of drugs that are known to have dangerous side effects, the most hazardous are drugs that thin the blood, heart medications, and chemotherapies. The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for regulating the nation’s pharmaceutical industry and approving new drug therapies based on testing, to determine what, if any, detrimental side effects are revealed. The agency is criticized by some for inadequate testing, and bowing to industry and political pressures. The FDA reports that every year, four million people suffer reactions that are harmful and 117,000 people are hospitalized.

Patients who take a lot of prescriptions may suffer because the combinations of various drugs cause an adverse reaction. When a new drug is tested for only a short period, a harmful side effect may not show up on tests. Individuals react differently and side effects can take a long time before revealing themselves. Another reason dangerous drugs are in use is that many physicians simply are not told a drug has a serious side effect.

Pharmaceutical sales representatives may conceal or lack that information, and doctors prescribe the drug to patients, according to a study of doctors in the U.S., France, and Canada published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Legal Options

A Fort Lauderdale dangerous drug lawyer advises that three legal options exist: strict liability, negligence, and marketing. An applicable law for suing a pharmaceutical company is the “strict liability” doctrine. The doctrine imposes the legal responsibility for causing drug-related harm upon the company without proof that the company intentionally acted carelessly.

Florida’s comparative negligence doctrine places blame upon the pharmaceutical company for failing to exercise a duty of care toward its customers. The drug maker can also be sued for failing to notify patients on the label of the drug that it produces side effects that the harmed person experienced.

Types of Recoverable Damages

A lawsuit claims a certain dollar figure to compensate for the harm or death caused. Damages are in two classes, economic and non-economic. Economic damages are medical and therapeutic treatment expenses related to the drug injury, prescriptions, income lost in the present, and income that cannot be earned in the future. Death cases can include funeral and burial expenses.

Non-economic compensation can include pain and suffering, mental anguish, emotional trauma, and loss of a spouse’s services. These are more difficult to assess.

Consultation with a Fort Lauderdale Dangerous Drug Attorney

To learn more about your legal position, take advantage of our Fort Lauderdale dangerous drug lawyers’ free, no-obligation consultation. The lawyer can evaluate the circumstances of the harm caused, and explain both the law and legal processes involved.