Hobbsr: Can I Sue for Diabetes Medication Side Effects?

Monday, October 12, 2015

Can I Sue for Diabetes Medication Side Effects?

You can sue for diabetes medication side effects. But you can’t sue the drug maker under state law if it is a generic Food and Drug Administration-approved medication. That doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do. It just may impact the claims you can make depending on the drug you have taken.

Suing for pharmaceutical drug defects is common and falls under personal injury law. The drug manufacturer is not the only target of the suit. You may also file a claim against the prescribing physician or the pharmacy that filled the prescription.

Drug Manufacturers’ Duty to Warn

Manufacturers must warn consumers of all known drug dangers. They are, however, exempt from liability for unknown dangers and they don’t have to tell you directly. The drug maker’s duty to warn is satisfied by warning doctors and pharmacists.

Note, however, that drug manufacturers are not responsible for extreme reactions from unusually susceptible people, meaning they need not anticipate every adverse possibility that could occur in every possible type of plaintiff.

Sometimes drug side effects become known after approval and release. Recently, for example, the FDA announced that type 2 diabetes medications called DPP-4 inhibitors could cause severe joint pain in patients a day or years after starting on the drugs. There have also been reports of injureis from SGLT2 inhibitors such as Invokana, Farxiga, Jardiance, and Xigduo XR.

Drug Defect Cases Are Complex: Contact a Lawyer

First things first, find a lawyer to handle your claim. Personal injury attorneys generally work on contingency and will not charge you unless they recover on your behalf. The fee they can take out of the recovery is limited by state statutes, too, so you should not have to shell out your own money or worry about overpaying later.

It’s also impossible to prosecute a personal injury suit without counsel. Drug defect cases are necessarily complex and require a very high-level understanding of the law and medicine.

This is not the kind of case you could take on alone. It is not even one to give your nephew the newly-minted attorney to experiment with. Find an expert to help you recover for injury due to side effects from your diabetes medications.

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