Texas Mass Torts vs. Class Action Lawsuits

Attorney Michael Grossman Discusses the Difference Between Class Action Lawsuits and Tort Lawsuits in Drug Injury Cases

Have you or a loved one suffered some sort of injury as a result of taking a drug? If so, you may have the right to receive compensation from the manufacturer of the drug. Our Texas drug injury attorneys at Grossman Law Offices realize, after over two decades of dealing with drug injury cases, that many people have great misconceptions about how such cases are handled. Most people do not understand the difference between class action lawsuits and mass tort claims.

Because of this, we wish to provide you with this informative article about these issues, so that you can have a better understanding of the legal situation in which you find yourself. In our experience, we have come to realize that only an informed client can make the right decisions about how to proceed with his or her legal situation. Please read on, and arm yourself with the information that you need in order to understand.

The Inner Workings of Drug Injury Claims

Pharmaceuticals must perform the task for which they are intended without causing any harm to the consumer, just like any other product that manufacturers make and sell to the American public. For instance, when you buy a car, you have the right to expect that it won't suddenly and unforeseeably flip over while driving down the road, and when you take a drug for the purposes of healing yourself, you have the right to expect that it won't kill you. Manufacturers are expected to test and research their drugs thoroughly to anticipate any harmful side effects before they are placed on the market. While these manufacturers can still sell a drug that causes detrimental side effects, they must warn the consumer of the side effect on the packaging and in advertising to the public.

However, since every human body is different, it's virtually impossible for drug manufacturers to predict every reaction that every patient is going to have to the drug. This reaction may be compounded by the possibility that a given patient could be taking various other drugs at the same time, and the combination of these pharmaceuticals could cause many unforeseen side effects. On the other hand, when a drug company fails to warn unsuspecting consumers of serious side effects that are being experienced by thousands of users, then that company can be held financially accountable for the harm done. This, allegedly, is what has happened with the drug Actos, as it has led to uncommonly high rates of bladder cancer in users. Nevertheless, in order to receive the compensation that a victim deserves, he or she must do more than simply approach the manufacturer (in this case, Takeda Pharmaceuticals), and demand whatever compensation he or she believes they were due. You are going to need to be able to present sufficient evidence that Takeda Pharmaceuticals knew or should have known the danger presented by Actos before it unleashed the product on the unsuspecting public in order to secure compensation for the harm that has been done to you. Additionally, you will need to establish that the harm done to you was caused by the drug, and also be able to prove the precise monetary amount of the injury that you sustained. The Dallas attorneys at Grossman Law Offices have been dealing with personal injury and wrongful death cases for more than 20 years, and we have found that drug injuries most often result from pharmaceutical companies who put profits before risk.

Differences Between Mass Torts and Class Action Lawsuits

It is difficult to prove the case of any drug injury, but the process is usually complicated further by the number of claimants that usually arise. If a drug had a negative impact on one person, then more than likely it had similar detrimental effects on other people as well. In other words, several different victims may be seeking compensation from the same defendant for one negligent act. Think of it in this manner – you are involved in a car accident, but there are fifty drivers and passengers hurt, all of whom expect to receive restitution from the party who caused the wreck. In order to simplify a situation such as this one, the judge will most likely combine all of the claims into one cause of action to ease the court’s caseload.

When it comes to drug injury cases, this situation is often the same. The drug company, in this case Takeda, negligently commits one wrongful act against several different people, so those people can then combine their causes into one mass tort lawsuit. However, this mass tort should not be confused with a "class-action" lawsuit. The defendants not only have the same cause of action, but also the same claim in a class action lawsuit; yet in a mass tort, the victims, known from a legal perspective as plaintiffs, have a shared cause of action but different individual claims.

To explain this in a simple manner – in a class action suit each plaintiff gets an equal share of the compensation; in a mass tort, plaintiffs receive a share of the damages according to the degree of harm that was sustained by them.

However, beneath the surface, there are even more differences between mass torts and class action suits. In a class action suit, only one Texas drug injury attorney will represent all of the claimants. Complications can arise when a victim is injured in Texas, but the suit is being filed in Washington state. The bigger problem with this situation is that the “equal disbursal of damages” means that a plaintiff could end up with far less compensation than he or she suffered in reality.

Let's examine a case from Grossman Law Offices’ past to understand the second dilemma presented by class-action lawsuits. A consumer class action lawsuit was filed against Netflix in 2004 in response to advertisements from Netflix boasting one-day delivery and a lack of limits on rentals. Netflix settled the case out of court for $4 million, but out of that settlement, roughly $2.5 million paid for legal fees and costs. This left each of the hundreds of claimants with only a coupon for their troubles. The outcome of this case provides evidence of just how joining a class-action lawsuit could greatly limit the ability of someone who has been wrongfully harmed to recover the true value of the harm done. Generally speaking, after a successful class-action lawsuit, the only people who get what they think they have coming to them are the lawyers. While there are some situations in which class action lawsuits are advised by our Dallas drug injury attorneys at Grossman Law Offices, the Actos drug injury situation is not one of them.

Representative Case

When it comes to a mass tort case, the compensation offered to each plaintiff will be based on one single representative case. In a case such as this, the first plaintiff to sue the drug manufacturer will be permitted to have his or her day in court. This plaintiff’s Texas drug injury lawyer will present in court all of the evidence he or she has regarding the nature of the injuries suffered by the victim since taking the drug, the liability of the manufacturer for those injuries, and the monetary value of the damages suffered by the victim. These will include medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, etc. In some cases, the drug manufacturer may even have to pay to the plaintiff punitive damages, which are additional financial punishments for severe forms of negligence.

How this first representative case is resolved will directly have an effect on the outcome of all other later lawsuits filed against the drug manufacturer for the same hazardous drug. Here, the relationship is much the same as the way a Supreme Court ruling affects all other courts beneath it. The fate of your case depends upon the resolution of the first representative case, to put it more simply.

In many situations, after a drug manufacturer has been found negligent for a drug injury, then the judge can order the drug company to set aside a certain amount of funds in a trust to cover anticipated future claims against the drug manufacturer. Once this fund is gone, the ability of an injured party to seek compensation is gone as well. Thus, no matter what time frame the statute of limitations may allow, you are wise to act quickly to find a lawyer and file a claim if you have suffered any sort of drug injury. The drug injury attorneys at Grossman Law Offices stand ready to help you. We are available by phone 24 hours a day for a free conference to answer your questions and give you legal advice. Call 1-855-326-0000 (toll free) today.

Statute of Limitations

After suffering any personal injury, in order to have the right to file a lawsuit, you must be able to establish a "cause of action” – in other words, that the defendant had a legal duty owed to you and neglected to fulfill that duty, resulting in measurable financial harm to you.

However, there is only a given amount of time legally permitted to file a claim for cause of action. This period of time is known as the statute of limitations. You cannot bring a claim against a defendant after the statute of limitation on a cause of action has subsided, no matter how much you deserve compensation. Exactly how much time is permitted in the statute of limitations is different from one state to another and also from one type of cause of action to another. In the state of Texas, like most states, the victim has two years after a breach of duty and the cause of the injury to file a claim (although, it is three years in Arkansas). However, in drug injury cases, this determining factor becomes somewhat muddled. When did the injury occur? Was it when the victim first took the drug, the day when the injury first started to manifest itself, or the day when the victim first realized the injury had been caused by the drug?

In making this determination, the court attempts to take the most reasonable path; the one that presents the least amount of limitation on the rights of someone who has been wrongfully injured, to pursue compensation. Over the course of time, in the United States common law has come to recognize in drug injury cases that the statute of limitations begins when the plaintiff should have known about the dangers presented by the drug. According to a host of previous drug injury cases, the statute of limitations is recognized to begin when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) makes an official public statement regarding the drug and the dangerous side effects the drug appears to be causing. Once this public statement has occurred, the defendant's negligence is considered "common knowledge". Moreover, if the manufacturer takes it upon itself in the form of a voluntary press release to warn consumers of possible dangerous side effects with a drug that it makes, then this also constitutes the beginning of the statute of limitations, since now the possible danger has been made public.

In many drug injury situations, the drug may have been harming victims for many years before the side effect came to light, so the state must find a way to extend the statute of limitations, in order for personal injury claims to be viable, such as starting the statute of limitations from the date that knowledge of the side effect went public. However, the defendant has the ability to argue that the statute of limitations should not have been extended in each and every claim. In order to ensure that the alternative statute of limitations applies in your case, you will need a skilled and experienced Texas drug injury attorney who knows how to rebuff the defense attorney’s claims. The attorneys at Grossman Law Offices have over twenty years of experience in litigating drug injury cases.

Multi-Jurisdiction Litigation

As we have already mentioned, exactly how much time a plaintiff has to file a claim from the date a drug injury becomes common knowledge depends upon the jurisdiction in which the claim is filed. In Texas, the statute of limitations allows two years, but in Arkansas, the statute of limitations extends to three years. So what happens if there are drug injury victims in both states or if the drug injury occurs in one state, but the drug was manufactured in another state? Which statute of limitations should apply to the case?

To discover the answer to this puzzling question, we must consult with the rules regarding multi-jurisdictional litigation. A representative trial, which is used to establish the basis for claims, usually takes place in the jurisdiction where the defendant has its headquarters or has manufactured the dangerous drug. However, this is not the jurisdiction that establishes the statute of limitations for all subsequent claims. The victim's rights in a given case are usually based upon the procedures and laws of the jurisdiction in which the victim lives and was injured by the drug. This leads to a difficult task for the presiding judge; he or she must then combine the laws of both jurisdictions. The statute of limitations will be borrowed from the victim's home location, but the rules of evidence, trial procedures, damages, and other local issues will come from the jurisdiction in which the representative case had been filed.

How Do I Get the Compensation I Deserve?

As we have pointed out earlier in this article, the judge who presides over the representative case usually dictates that a certain amount of funds must be put aside in a trust by the defendant for the sole purpose of paying damages to the many victims who were injured by the drug. All of the remaining victims must then compete with each other to gain access to the funds held in trust. This creates a necessity for fast action and strong legal representation. Do not delay in securing a trustworthy Dallas drug lawsuit attorney to aid you, lest you either find your claim at the back of the line, or get your name in too late for there to be any funds left for your fair share.

Please understand, you are not likely to be able to adequately handle the nuisances of filing a drug injury claim without proper legal guidance, unless you already have significant experience in handling drug injury cases. Your claim could be tossed out before it is even seriously considered if you do not follow the proper procedures and rules provided by the court. What is more, as we have already suggested, anyone who hesitates to join in a mass tort claim risks the strong possibility that the defendant will exhaust his ability to pay after the funds which were required to be placed in trust run out. In other words, if you or someone you love has been injured by a drug, then you are already racing the clock, along with everyone else who was injured, in order to get your fair share of the funds. What is more, you need a Dallas drug injury attorney who has vast experience in handling similar cases in order to adequately establish the dollar value of the compensation you are owed. This is known as “proving up damages” in a drug injury case. You need the right Dallas, Texas drug injury lawyer in order to protect your rights and your ability to be fairly compensated. You need Grossman Law Offices.

The Drug Injury Attorneys at Grossman Law Offices Can Help You

Our drug injury attorneys at Grossman Law Offices have been helping people who have been injured by dangerous drugs and other defective products for over two decades.

Our commitment to justice has enabled hundreds of clients to secure many millions of dollars in damages from large corporations and every major insurance provider in the nation. Thus, we have the experience to handle a Texas mass tort case and in so doing make sure our clients get their fair share of the allowable compensation before the applicable trust is gone.

In order to ask questions and find out just what we can do for you, call us now for a free consultation at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free). If you or a loved one has been injured due to the negative side-effects of a drug, you must act now or risk losing the restitution for damages that you deserve.