[box type=”tick” style=”rounded” border=”full”]Bark Of The Week[/box]
Bottom-line: New York allows victims of drug related side effects to file a lawsuit after three-years from onset of injury
Imagine you are a young man taking an over-the-counter drug to help you lose weight. While taking the drug you suffer multiple strokes. Nobody knows why you suffered the strokes, so you accept it as just another medical burden and continue on with your life. Now fast forward four years later and new scientific research comes out showing that the weight loss drug you took probably caused your stroke. Up until this month you could not file a lawsuit against the drug company in New York when the science finally caught up to your injury.
In New York you generally have three years to file a claim for personal injury. For example, if a car hits you on January 1, 2011 you have until December 31, 2014 to file your lawsuit. Car accidents are pretty straightforward, however an injury by a drug is not. In many instances someone who suffers a drug related injury does not know that the drug is what caused their injury. This is due to many reasons, one of which is that dangerous side effects of drugs are not discovered until it is released into the market. In New York if you suffered a stroke due to a drug in January 1, 1999 you will have until December 31, 2002 to file your lawsuit. So when the science supporting the association between the stroke and the drug comes to light in 2005 you will not be able to file a claim. New York’s Civil Practice and Law Rules (CPLR) Section 214-c of provides an extension of time to file a case, but courts have been reluctant to apply this rule to drug cases until now.
Section 214-c deals with injuries that do not appear until sometime after exposure to toxic substances (what the rule calls “latent” injuries). The idea is that the science linking a latent injury to toxic exposure would be a few years behind. The debate in apply this rule to drug related injuries has centered over what is actually a “latent” injury.
In the past, New York courts largely ruled that a “latent” injury couldn’t occur within hours of taking a drug. A case pending in federal court in New York called Giordano v. Market America, Inc., 2011 WL 383037 (2nd Cir., 2011), has now provided a clear answer. In that case the federal court (Second Circuit Court of Appeals) asked the highest court in the State of New York (Court of Appeals) its opinion on whether or not adverse reactions to a drug can be considered a “latent” injuries. The New York court rendered an opinion that an injury that occurs within hours of exposure to a substance can be considered “latent”. There were other significant rulings to come out of this opinion, however the most important is that New York citizens injured by drugs now have a little extra time to file their case.
This is a great victory for consumers everywhere.
Case:
Giordano v. Market America, Inc., 2011 WL 383037 (2nd Cir., 2011)