A federal judge in Indiana has vacated his previous ruling that wrongful death claims brought against the makers of Paxil were preempted by federal regulations. This reversal will now allow the claims...

to be heard. The judge, David Hamilton, said that in the previous ruling the “court failed to appreciate the significance of the fact” that a drug manufacturers can modify the label of a medication without FDA approval, if they have reasonable evidence of serious harm that could be inflicted on patients. In the case of Paxil, SmithKline Beecham Corp. (now GlaxoSmithKline), failed to revise the label when they were well aware potential harm to recipients of the drug.

In the next term the Supreme Court will address the issue of preemption related to pharmaceuticals in the case Wyeth v Levine. The basic question that the court will have the duty of answering is whether the FDA’s approval of a medication should preempt state product liability lawsuits brought over injuries incurred by recipients but not specifically warned of on the label of a drug.

This is a very serious and intricate question that court must address in the coming months. If the court were to decide that lawsuits would be preempted by FDA approval, as they did for certain medical devices in Riegel v Medtronic, it would be a catastrophic blow to the plaintiffs’ rights. Hopefully the court will not be influenced by big pharma’s attempt to demonize the trail lawyers and product liability lawsuits.

While it is true that some trial attorneys have brought forth frivolous lawsuits that have given the entire industry a bad name, they are very much in the minority. Most plaintiffs’ attorneys truly do care for their clients and have chosen to work in the field that they do out of compassion for victims.

Pharmaceutical companies are amongst the richest companies in the world. Their greed and desire for profit transcends all barriers. On numerous occasions pharmaceutical companies have concealed evidence of adverse effects from their products, all in an effort to make more profit off of a medication that they knew was placing innocent victims in harm’s way.

These business giants must be held accountable for the injuries incurred from the medications that they make. If the tens of millions spent on lobbying each and a small portion of the multi-billion dollar profits seen by some companies each and every year were to go into making safer more effective drugs and better research, maybe there would not be a great need for plaintiffs’ law in this area. But as it stands now, the victims of defective medications need help more than ever.