Female contraception is common these days, with many medications, medical devices and methods available. One popular birth control method is the intrauterine device, or IUD. There are many companies making different types of IUDs that work in different ways. Some use copper as the primary means of contraception while others…
I imagine it can seem overwhelming. Let’s say you had artificial hip surgery in 2011. By 2016 you begin to feel some unusual, new pain. So you Google artificial hip implants and you discover an ocean of words on the many failed artificial hip components that have been sold and…
Dr. Robert Califf is a cardiologist and the departing Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. He resigned his post last Friday, on Inauguration Day. Recently he gave a speech regarding his thoughts on the future of prescription drug testing, and he urged lawmakers to respect the value of science…
Now and then I get calls from people who are representing themselves in product liability litigation. (An individual who represents himself in litigation is called a pro se litigant.) Usually these callers have worked their cases to a point and have questions. Sometimes the questions are rather modest: “I’ve been…
Even if you’ve never needed a surgical mesh implant, you’ve probably heard about a number of lawsuits due to problems patients are having with them. One type in particular has been the transvaginal mesh (TVM) implants in women. These TVM lawsuits are well underway, with tens of thousands of lawsuits…
Causation is usually simple: this happened because of that. The wheel fell off my bicycle, causing me to fall and break my arm. Legal causation is not so simple, and it can be very difficult to prove in a civil case. Legal causation or “proximate cause” involves an event (or…
Imagine going to sleep the night after making the decision to strip five hundred million dollars from six families. I imagine it would be unsettling. On Tuesday, Judge Ed Kinkeade, a federal judge in Texas overseeing the Depuy Pinnacle MDL, made the decision to cut $500,000,000.00 from a jury award…
First, let me make the case for smoking: You enjoy it. It tastes good (I guess). It makes you alert (I hear); but also, oddly, it can calm you as well (from what I’ve read). You also look cool doing it (I confess; this last part is often true). And…
If you’ve kept up with politics even a little bit, you know how much gridlock exists in Congress. It’s amazing that anything can get done in Washington. However, a new law called the 21st Century Cures Act just passed with tremendous bipartisan support; this law must be really good, right?…
I will publish a new book this week: Product Liability Law: Litigation, Settlement, and Wellness. The book offers concise chapters on issues you need to be aware of when you first discover that a medical device may have failed in your body, or when a prescription medication is beginning to cause…