Defective Drug Lawsuits

Any type of drug or medication can be defective and that defect can cause serious harm or death. Even seemingly benign over-the-counter (OTC) medications can cause life-threatening adverse reactions and permanent injuries. It is easy to believe that if your doctor prescribes a drug, you can trust it to be safe. But in many cases, the dangers associated with medications are hidden even from the doctors who rely on them when treating patients.

Do You Need a Defective Drug Lawyer?

Newer medications are always suspect because there just has not been enough time to see if they will cause harm with long-term use. Pharmaceutical companies often rush their products to market, advertising them as the latest and greatest and an improvement over exiting treatments or breakthroughs that cure or help with conditions for which there has previously been no treatment. The testing may not have been enough to truly know what the side effects will be, and in many cases the results were serious harm or death, and the drug makers hide the results to make huge profits in a short amount of time before the competition beats them to it and before the dangers of the drug become known.

Adverse effects of dangerous medications are not always obvious. They may not appear to be related to what the drug is supposed to do for you. In some cases, the side effects of a drug will mimic worsening of the condition it is meant to treat, leading patients and even doctors to believe that a higher dose or more frequent use is needed. Medications used to treat the symptoms of minor health problems can have deadly side effects.

If you or someone you love has been harmed by a defective medication you need to know your options. My Price Lawyers has a nationwide network of knowledgeable and affordable defective drug attorneys.

Please call us at (888) 473-6137 today for your free claim evaluation.

How My Price Lawyers Can Help When You Have Been Harmed by a Dangerous Medication

If you have been harmed by a defective drug, you may be facing substantial medical bills, a future of ongoing medical care, and you may not be able to work again. You need to know how you will pay your bills and keep food on the table. You may be very worried about what the future will hold for you and your family. Taking on a pharmaceutical company is no small task, but it can be done with the help of an experienced pharmaceutical injury attorney.

Hiring an attorney may seem unrealistic to you right now with the financial hardships you are already facing, but you should not let concerns about money keep you from getting the help you need and the compensation you deserve.

My Price Lawyers can connect you with an experienced and dedicated defective drug attorney with expertise in the specific drug that caused you harm. We do this at no charge to you. The attorneys in our network handle the cases that come through My Price Lawyers are affordable and they represent injury victims like you on a contingency fee basis. You do not pay attorneys’ fees unless you win money. Then, the fee is a percentage of what you receive, not hourly rates.

When you call My Price Lawyers, you can afford the quality legal representation that you and all injury victims need and deserve.

Ways in Which Drugs Can Be Defective

Drug defects come in many forms.

In some cases, the drug is generally fine, but a manufacturing error, improper storage or another mistake made along the supply chain affects a batch or limited number of units to be contaminated or defective in some way that does not reflect a problem with the drug itself. The dangers are just as significant to those exposed to the defective units and if you were harmed you may have the right to compensation for your injuries.

Another dangerous defect is packaging error or improper packaging that can lead to administration of the wrong drug or the wrong dose. This type of error has even resulted in a fatal overdose.

The most common defects are failure to warn and improper marketing. These are defects that are not limited to batches or units but have the potential to harm anyone who takes the drug. Recalls for this type of defect is rare. When they occur, it is usually only after many people have been harmed or died from taking the drug. And even those recalls are not what you might expect. They are typically just recalls requiring a change to the drug’s label, not a removal of the drug from the market.

Failure to Warn

Almost every drug can have some kind of side effect and pose some risks, even if they are minimal. You should find these risks on the warning label. But, pharmaceutical companies are not always forthcoming about all the dangers that their products carry. In some cases, they know full well about the dangers of the drugs that they sell because they discovered them in their own testing, and then hid the results so that the medication would receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). You might think that would be a losing gamble and that the drug would be pulled and lose approval once the dangers and the deception are discovered, but it does not work that way. It is very rare for drugs with severe side effects to be withdrawn from the market once they have received FDA approval.

In addition to hiding dangers in order to receive approval, drug makers know that warnings scare people. They often try to avoid putting warnings of the most serious risks on their products because it will deter people from buying them and often deter doctors from even prescribing them, and that hurts their profits. Even if the risks come out and they are required to revise the warning label at a later date, they can make huge profits while the drug is new and popular. Once the customer base is established, many users and doctors will be reluctant to stop using it, even though the dangers are known.

Illegal Marketing

Another trick used by the pharmaceutical companies is “off-label” marketing, sometimes accompanied by paying kickbacks to doctors for prescribing their drugs off-label. Off-label prescribing is perfectly legal. Doctors have the leeway to do what they feel is best for their patients, as they should. The drug companies, however are not allowed to advertise their products for off-label uses.

When a medication is approved by the FDA it is approved for specific uses. That can mean for treating a specific health condition, for use in certain age groups, and other criteria. For instance, a chemotherapy drug may be approved to treat one kind of cancer, but not another. Or, antidepressants are often approved for adults, but not children, because they can affect children differently.

The drug companies often engage in off-label marketing directly to consumers or to healthcare professionals. They want to sell more of the drug, whether it is safe or not. Although off-label marketing is illegal, it still happens.

No Recall is Needed for You to Win

As mentioned, recalls are rare, and withdrawals are almost unheard-of. You do not need to worry if they drug that caused your injuries has not been subject to a recall. You can still win full and fair compensation for your injuries. An experienced defective drug attorney who is willing to stand up to the stand up to the pharmaceutical company can help you recover the money that you need and deserve for the harm that you have endured and may endure for the rest of your life.

My Price Lawyers will put you in touch with a drug injury attorney with the expertise and resources to get you the compensation you deserve.

Isn’t It Medical Malpractice?

When you have been harmed by a medication that was prescribed or recommended by your doctor, it is natural to assume that medical malpractice was involved. When a defective drug causes your injuries, your case does is not considered medical malpractice. It is a product liability case. The drug companies do not just hide the dangers from consumers like you, they hide them from doctors, too. When doctors do not know the risks associated with a drug, the harm is not due to negligence on their part.

Of course, medication errors can also occur and those do fall under medical malpractice. Your drug injury attorney will thoroughly investigate what happened in your case to determine whether you have a defective drug claim or a medical malpractice claim. And there are rare cases that fall under both. When a medication is improperly packaged or labeled, it can make medication errors more likely to occur and depending on the circumstances both the drug maker and the healthcare professional may be held responsible for the injuries caused by the error.

Find a Drug Injury Lawyer

If you or someone you love has been harmed by a defective drug, you need the help of an experienced and dedicated attorney who is not afraid to stand up to the pharmaceutical company on your behalf. My Price Lawyers is here to connect you with an experienced and affordable drug injury attorney near you. We work with attorneys in Tampa, Brandon, Lakeland, Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Sebring and all over the US.

Please call us at (888) 473-6137 or contact us today to get started.