Philadelphia Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

Philadelphia Trial Lawyers want to keep all of Pennsylvania's courthouse doors open to those Philadelphia and Pennsylvania injured victims who decide to pursue a measure of justice through our civil justice system. Whether a personal injury plaintiff brings a law suit for medical malpractice, product liability, birth injury or car accident, for the most part, state legislatures have the final say with regard to tort reform in their respective states.

However, tort reform has been brought into the national spotlight. As the national healthcare reform debate rages on, the opposition looks to tort reform as a powerful bargaining chip. Recently, President Obama said "he wants to look at a 'range of ideas' to 'put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine.'' Such a comment, in addition to other rumors circulating in the blogosphere has those of us who strive to keep our courthouse doors open, worried. The attorneys at Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg & Jeck have been fighting for the rights of injured victims of medical malpractice, product liability, birth injury or car accidents for decades in Pennsylvania. Please, reach out to your Senator or Congressperson on the Hill and voice your opinion - the courthouse doors must stay open.

As a follow-up post to "Consumer Health and Safety Or Pharma's Bottom Line", the New York State legislature recently proposed to eliminate the learned intermediary doctrine for prescription drugs or devices that are marketed through direct-to-consumer marketing. Here is the bill. It makes complete sense. From the text of the Bill: "Historically, with regard to prescription drugs, our courts have created an exception to the traditional duty of manufacturers to warn consumers directly of risks associated with their products because they warned health care providers of those risks. This made sense in an era of "doctor knows best," when pharmaceutical manufacturers directed all of their sales efforts at physicians and never at consumers.

In light of the recent, and expensive, mass marketing of prescription drugs, manufacturers should no longer be relieved of the duty to properly warn their advertising targets about the dangers of their products. Just as the manufacturer can make direct claims about the efficacy of its products, so should that manufacturer warn of its risks. By advertising directly to the patient, manufacturers make the patient an active participant in the decision to use the drug and cannot, therefore, claim the potential adverse effects of using the drug are so complex that they can only be communicated to physicians." We'll have to wait and see how the New York State legislature responds to this bill. In the meantime, call your local state representative and encourage them to introduce a similar, common sense, consumer friendly bill in your home state.