Personal Injury and Defective Drug Claims Wisconsin

provided by: 

A person who has been injured from taking a defective drug can recover damages resulting from the drugs under both the legal theory of negligence as well as strict liability.

Drug companies have a legal obligation to properly test each product before seeking FDA approval. In addition, drug labels must fully disclose all relevant and material information about the drug and adequately warn of its side effects. Drug companies also have a legal duty to discourage misuse.

Under the law of strict liability, drug manufacturers can be held strictly liable for injuries or deaths caused by their products regardless of the care they took to prevent such harm. A key legal issue is whether the product is unreasonably dangerous for its intended use.

A defective drug is one whose potential risks outweigh its intended benefits. The mere fact that a drug possesses serious dangers does not always mean it will be taken off the market. Instead, drug companies are likely only to add a warning to its labeling, allowing the drug to continue to be sold to unsuspecting patients.

Drug manufacturers are corporations, and as such their duty of loyalty is owed first and foremost to their shareholders. This means that drug companies, like most other large corporations, are primarily driven by money and profit per share. Unfortunately, drug companies have been caught manipulating test information and often downplaying the possible adverse side effects found in their drugs.

Compounding the problem is the fact that the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) often fails to conduct adequate research on drug products or devotes less than sufficient time to perform a thorough screening of drug products. This can lead to the approval of dangerous and defective drugs. The one countermeasure to this dilemma is the lawyers who represent victims in product liability actions against the drug companies in which they demand both compensation and sometimes punitive damages for their injured clients.

For more information on personal injury law visit GotTrouble.com. (http://gottrouble.com/legal/injury/index.html)