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JusticeSeekers Policy Statement
Regarding SSRI Wrongful Death Litigation
Our website contains information which we hope will be helpful to members of the public. Many of the people who access this website have had something tragic happen either to themselves or a family member while taking an anti-depressant, such as Prozac, Zoloft, or Paxil. Frequently they ask us about litigation. It is indeed rare that we ever encourage them to litigate with the drug companies. There are many reasons for this. Trial lawyers are the gatekeepers of the civil justice system. Our responsibility–which we take very seriously–is to discourage litigation in all but the most egregious cases. Involving yourself in a lawsuit with defendants with unlimited resources is a mammoth undertaking, sapping most of your emotional, spiritual, and economic resources. In the face of a tragedy, these resources are already seriously depleted. Our experience is that the pharmaceutical companies will do virtually anything to protect their multi-billion dollar drugs. When you sue them, their lawyers will open every closet door in your life and microscopically examine every skeleton. Every aspect of your life–a spouse’s drinking problem, a daughter’s abortion, problems at work–will be blamed for what their drug might have caused. It’s not a bit overstating the rigors of litigation to tell you that the process itself just might be worse than the tragedy that caused the filing of the claim. The pharmaceutical industry and its lawyers have been extremely successful in making these cases the legal equivalency of nuclear war.
We are not against the manufacturing and the responsible marketing of anti-depressants. Properly prescribed and monitored by well-informed physicians, these drugs undoubtedly can and do help many people. But, in our opinion, there’s a flaw in the way they’re marketed, both to the doctors who prescribe them and the consumers who take them. In a significant number of patients, these drugs "activate" them, that is they cause a condition of being jittery and "bouncing off walls". They cause a condition known as "akathisia" which the patient usually experiences as feeling as if he/she wants to "jump out of my skin". In some of those patients, these physical reactions trigger impulsive violence and suicide. The drug companies know this–it was seen all through their clinical trials with their drugs. In other countries (unlike the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) the agency that approves the drugs and their warnings does its own research. In some of those countries the drug companies are required to give more explicit warnings about the increased risk of violence and/or suicide. No such warning is required by our FDA here in the U.S. Our FDA does no research on the drugs–it relies totally on the information given to it by the drug companies. And its safety standards are "minimum safeguards" for the general populace. Unfortunately, the frequency of violence and suicide is either misreported or underreported.
The problem is that the drug companies know that there is a direct correlation between their warnings and the frequency with which physicians – particularly the non-mental health doctors who comprise the bulk of their market – will prescribe their drugs. The more side effects there are–and the worse they are–the less likely the physicians are to write the prescription. Tragically, it’s all about money.
The bottom line is that even though a patient took one of these anti-depressants and hurt themself or others, and even though the drug companies knew of this problem and didn’t warn U.S. consumers or their doctors about it, we recommend litigation to less than 5% of those individuals and families who inquire about the possibility. The deck is stacked overwhelmingly in favor of this giant industry, and tragically, the civil justice system usually collapses under the weight.
Notwithstanding this caution, however, we remain willing to prosecute meritorious cases involving wrongful death or serious, permanent, physical injuries.
If you wish to report an adverse drug reaction to the FDA, you can click here to go directly to MedWatch, the FDA's medical products reporting program. |
