If you believe a prescription or over-the-counter medication caused your illness or injury, proving this connection can be a daunting legal task.
Specifically, you’ll need to show, through evidence and careful argumentation, that someone else’s negligence, corruption, carelessness, or other malfeasance caused the illness or injury in question.
To you, the situation may seem obvious. But time and other factors can work against your claim, leaving you with few options or no financial remedy.
If you hope to file and win a lawsuit in North Carolina related to a defective drug, you’ll need an experienced legal team to analyze and represent your claim.
Below, the DeMayo Law Offices explore medicine-related injuries and illnesses, and we discuss what to do if you or a loved one suffers an adverse effect to a medication.
Protect Your Proof
It’s critical to take immediate action if you suspect a link between a medication and an adverse effect or injury.
The longer you wait to investigate the connection, the more doubt the defense can create in the minds of other people.
Contact an attorney right away if you suspect a link. Attorneys who specialized in medication injuries will be aware of drug and medical device recalls as well as class action suits already underway.
What’s more, an attorney can help ensure you take the appropriate steps to protect what evidence is available and within the time limitations set forth by North Carolina’s statutes of limitation.
Generally speaking, medical injury claims must be filed within three years of the date of injury. However, there are situations when an injury or adverse effect is not fully known or understood until much later, in which case time limitations for filing a claim may be extended.
The only way to protect your claim is to contact an experienced injury lawyer as soon as you become aware of a medication-related injury or illness.
Who Is Responsible for Medication-Related Injuries?
In most cases, pharmaceutical companies are held responsible for injuries or illnesses caused by prescriptions or over-the-counter medications.
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars researching and developing profitable drugs; they have an obligation to provide safe, effective medications.
For the past several years, medical recalls demonstrate an upward trend. More than a million Americans went to emergency rooms due to adverse drug effects in 2014; 124,000 people died from those events.
In 2017, there were more than 1,000 drug recalls enforced by the FDA; more than 3,000 medical devices were recalled the same year.
Unfortunately, holding a pharmaceutical company responsible for a drug-related injury, illness, or death is no small task. They have endless financial support to construct a legal defense; they often drag out these types of cases hoping to exhaust victims of their resources.
The longer you delay connecting with an experienced North Carolina class action or personal injury law firm, the more legal challenges you’ll face on the road to compensation and justice.
Visit our video library to learn more about the DeMayo Law Offices.
Real Life Scenarios
Even when your situation seems obvious and compelling, you might be forgetting certain risk factors prior to the injury. This is what the defense will latch onto in an effort to shirk liability.
For example, let’s say your husband suffered a heart attack while getting a dialysis treatment. The defense might point to his medical records and suggest that his high levels of blood triglycerides elevated his risk for heart disease.
The defense might argue that the drug didn’t cause the problem; your spouse was almost certain to have a heart attack regardless of the treatment.
It’s one thing to instantly suffer a stroke after taking a certain medication; it’s much easier to demonstrate cause and effect. However, postponed effects create complexities that can only be unraveled by an experienced injury team.
At the DeMayo Law Offices, our skilled injury lawyers are prepared to take on injury cases and medical class action lawsuits. We’ll protect your interests from big pharmaceutical companies, while holding negligent parties responsible.
Get more smart sense and safety information. Follow the DeMayo Law Offices on Twitter, or ‘like’ us on Facebook.
