Dangerous Drug Lawyer in Los Angeles: Former Insurance Defense Attorneys

Dangerous drug lawyer in Los Angeles from Lederer & Nojima is for patients who developed a serious injury after taking a prescription drug or using a medical device and want to know whether the product or its warnings were to blame, so you can decide on a claim before the deadline passes.

Drug and device injury claims are product liability claims. The usual theories are a manufacturing defect (this batch or unit was made wrong), a failure to warn (the risks were not disclosed to doctors and patients in time) and negligence. California limits design defect claims against prescription drug makers, and federal law can restrict some claims, so the theory has to fit the product. A claim can reach the manufacturer, and in some situations a distributor or other company in the chain.

These cases are document-heavy and technical. They turn on clinical trial data, adverse event reports, FDA submissions and label changes, the medical records showing when the medication was taken and what happened next, and sometimes on whether a brand-name or generic manufacturer is involved, because different legal rules apply to each. Some injuries are part of larger consolidated litigation. Which path fits depends on the product and your facts.

David Lederer and John Nojima spent years defending insurers. They know how a defendant's lawyers approach a case that depends on expert testimony and large volumes of records, and they decide early whether a claim is worth bringing.

California recognizes several product liability theories, but a prescription drug maker is generally not strictly liable for a design defect, so manufacturing defects, warnings and negligence are analyzed separately. For prescription drugs and devices, courts apply the learned intermediary doctrine, so the manufacturer's duty to warn generally runs to the physician rather than directly to the patient. Federal law also affects what a manufacturer must do, especially for generic drugs, so the type of product matters.

Most personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits have a two year filing period under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, but accrual rules, exceptions and claims against public entities can change the applicable deadline. When the injury or its cause was not reasonably discoverable, the discovery rule can change when the clock starts. Because that analysis is fact-specific, speak with a lawyer rather than assuming you have time.