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CRITERIA FOR POTENTIAL PLAINTIFFS
Law Offices of Gregg R. Lien P.O. Box 7442 Tahoe City, California 96145 Phone 530.583.8500 Fax 530.581.3535 CRITERIA FOR POTENTIAL PLAINTIFFS Liability by Drug Companies for Injury To Those Treated for “HIV”
Theory of the Case: The drugs taken by those with HIV are literally killing them.
Our medical team is headed by Dr. Mohammed Al-Bayati, who has employed differential diagnosis techniques to raise serious questions about the mainstream belief that AIDS is caused by HIV, or by any virus or infectious agent at all. Dr. Al-Bayati’s work is now attracting serious attention in the medical community, and his work has recently been published in the British Medical Journal and other respected publications. In particular, Dr. Al-Bayati’s research calls into question the appropriateness of the standard treatment protocols for HIV.
The mainstays of treatment currently include rigorous use of highly toxic drugs for so-called “anti-viral therapy”. The use of these drugs has been determined by Dr. Al-Bayati to have devastating and often fatal results for those who use them as prescribed. We now suspect that the major manufacturers of these drugs have aggressively marketed them in a manner that put profits ahead of the well being of the patient, and that those manufacturers knew, or should have known, that use of their products resulted in little benefit with a high risk of injury. We also suspect that the warnings and disclosures that accompany distribution of these drugs are wholly inadequate to provide the medical community at large, or the individual patient, with the guidance necessary to allow for the informed consent to their use.
We do not intend to include the prescribing physician as a defendant in the litigation we envision. In most cases, they are merely acting in accord with guidelines suggested by the FDA, which in turn was heavily influenced by studies, information, and other influence brought to bear by the manufacturers, as well as well-intended but erroneous science.
On the contrary, we would hope that the physicians involved would be allies, at least to the extent that they might agree that the drugs are likely to be implicated in the injury. At this juncture, a class action suit or other “mass tort” would not be appropriate. We are therefore currently interviewing individual potential plaintiffs to determine their suitability to “lead the charge” into this largely unexplored area of liability against the major drug manufacturers.
As the costs and time involved in pursuing this litigation will be substantial, we are looking for individual plaintiffs who would have the highest chance of initial success. Set forth below is the criteria we believe are most important in reviewing individual cases. Proximate Causation To the extent that it can be shown in the most direct and persuasive way that the drugs (AZT, ddl, 3TC, etc.) were the proximate cause of injury the better. There are several important considerations that are important in this context.
First, there should be a “signature injury” - - in other words, an injury that is typical of those that occur due to the class of drugs in question. In this case, this generally means liver damage that can be shown by liver function tests and biopsy results to be likely to have been caused by the drugs. While other types of injury are also common, liver damage should be present among them.
Secondly, it is important to be able to rule out other causes of the liver damage or other injury. For that reason, the ideal case would involve a plaintiff that appeared to be healthy and normal and showed no impairment of liver function immediately prior to beginning the treatment regimen and only thereafter began to have symptoms.
Further, the ideal plaintiff would not have used any other prescription drugs with similar side effects, be an abuser of recreational drugs, or of alcohol. The injury should appear within the first few months of treatment. [Note: In personal injury cases, the time within which one may file suit for damages is short, often just one year from the date of injury or the discovery of the cause of action.]
The case would be greatly simplified to the extent that fewer drugs are used as part of the treatment. We want to avoid the type of “finger-pointing” situation where a defendant drug manufacturer can argue that another product produced by another company caused the injury. If all of the drugs taken were produced by the same company (for example, Bristol-Myers Squibb manufactures several anti-virals commonly prescribed), this neatly avoids this problem.
Extent of Injury Although any injury is unacceptable morally and even legally from a technical point of view, a sad fact of life (relevant to the legal system in particular) is that only those cases which pose a substantial and immediate threat to the drug manufacturer’s bottom line will generate an award by a jury, or a settlement, sufficient to both compensate the plaintiff and pay for the cost of pursuing the litigation.
Defendants are well aware that attorney’s fees are NOT generally allowed to be awarded to the prevailing party in civil litigation. This results in a situation where a plaintiff cannot make sense out of paying for the cost of a trial only to find that the amount awarded is insufficient to even reimburse out of pocket costs. As a practical matter, there is simply no practical means of obtaining justice for those whose injuries could be valued at anything less than the mid-six figures when taking on a corporate giant in litigation like this. (It is for this reason that personal injury cases are normally handled on a “contingency” basis where the attorney is only paid if he or she is successful in obtaining an award for the client, and the fee paid to the attorney is an agreed percentage of the final award.)
There are no guarantees that if we do accept a client and initiate litigation that anything whatsoever will be obtained at the end of the process, as the defendants will invest heavily in protecting the profits from their drug by any and all means at their disposal. In short, the potential award must be high enough to offset the considerable risks associated with litigation. On a related point, life (from the point of view of the “experts” who value life by reading actuarial tables and anticipated annual income figures) is often cheap.
While there are exceptions, therefore, we are not looking primarily for wrongful death cases. We are looking for live plaintiffs who have endured and survived great suffering and hardship, and/or who have permanent disabilities and injuries from taking the drugs. The ideal plaintiff would be one who would immediately inspire the sympathy of a jury of one’s peers. Beyond recovery for the injuries themselves, the value of a case can be enhanced to the extent that others have been damaged by the injuries to the patient.
For example, the loss of the value of a functioning spouse or parent, the daily burden of care, and evidence of emotional suffering (such as an attempted suicide due to the stresses associated with the injury), would all provide a basis for claiming compensation. The Degree of Wrongful Conduct by the Defendant(s)and the Economic Health of the Defendant.
A drug manufacturer owes a duty to warn of side effects and other potential harm, and to not conceal information that may affect the judgment of a prescribing physician or a patient using a drug. To the extent that it can be shown that a manufacturer knowingly concealed information regarding a significant pattern of injury, it may be held liable for punitive damages or penalties in additional to general damages. Punitive damages are designed to deter corporate conduct that knowingly harms others. Because of this, juries may impose punitive damages against major corporations that amount to millions of dollars.
It is not likely that an individual plaintiff would know anything about what was known to the manufacturer before litigation is commenced, as this information would likely be discovered as part of court-ordered disclosures during the “discovery” phase of the litigation. Nonetheless, it is helpful if the plaintiff and his medical team have kept as many records as possible. Beyond the marketing information, package inserts, and prescribing information made available to physicians there are sometimes other useful clues that a drug company has information that its product may be harmful. This may be in the form of something called a “Dear Doctor” letter, which is required by the FDA to be sent to physicians upon discovery of a significant problem with a drug, medical device or product. The physician may have had other indications of a problem that may be useful in evaluating the case, such as changes in warning labels, regulatory actions, or published medical literature. A final factor would be the economic viability of the defendant manufacturer.
Several major companies have either gone bankrupt or ceased operation in recent years. It is also common in this era of corporate mergers and takeovers for a manufacturer to have changed its identity, and this may have occurred several times since the injury to the plaintiff occurred. A mere change of identity will not necessarily bar recovery, but does complicate the pursuit of the case.
Other Factors The plaintiff should be able to be a good witness. Unless their injury has affected their cognitive or expressive functions, they should be able to accurately and clearly describe what happened to them. Litigation can be stressful at times, and may last for several years before some conclusion is reached. For that reason, the plaintiff must be committed to working closely with their legal and medical team as necessary as the case progresses through the legal system.
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Dear Jojoi,
I would like to share with you an important development that lawyers in California have started to take cases of people damaged by AZT and other antiretroviral medications and parents who refused to give their children AZT and other toxic medications based on the false assumption that HIV causes AIDS. Attached please find a copy of the document prepared by Mr. Lien "CRITERIA FOR POTENTIAL PLAINTIFFS". Please feel free to post this document on your site. I am serving as expert witness on these cases. We have strong medical evidence that shows HIV does not cause AIDS that we will present in court.
Dr. Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati, 27.05.04 16:57
Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati, Ph.D., D.A.B.T., D.A.B.V.T. Toxicologist and Pathologist
Toxi-Health International, 150 Bloom Dr. Dixon, CA 95620 - Tel: (707) 678-4484, Fax: (707) 678-8505, maalbayati@toxi-health.com - http://www.toxi-health.com
see also:
Aids Court Cases
Dr. Gallo Court Cases
HIV never isolated
Dingell Staff Report
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