Everyone has seen the medicine commercials that read off the laundry list of negative side effects that prescription drugs can have on those who take them. While it is unlikely for a drug to have zero side effects, these potentially dangerous effects should be recognized and mitigated before the drugs are released to the public. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires the completion of clinical trials on new drugs to keep individuals from falling victim to dangerous side effects. However, some pharmaceutical companies have failed to provide the public with the truth about the drugs they manufacture. Defective drugs can cause emotional, physical, and/or psychological injury.

Common Types of Drugs Found to Be Defective

If a drug’s side effects are not properly conveyed to the public, the drug is considered defective. The following are common medications whose negative side effects have deemed them defective on many occasions, resulting in court proceedings for the injured parties:

Many people dread a trip to the doctor's office, even more so a trip to the hospital. For some, there is something terrifying about yielding control of their bodies over to strangers. Hospitals are buildings that deal with life and death and remind us of our mortality. Are these fears unfounded? Most of the time patients find themselves in capable and caring hands. When they do not, the results can be devastating. One Kevin Baldridge, a 64-year-old patient at St. James Hospital in Northern Chicago, sadly found this out firsthand.

Baldridge visited the hospital complaining of abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting. The doctors and technicians at the hospital performed many tests and CT scans, but failed to notice a significant amount of internal bleeding. These professionals included two radiologists and even a vascular surgeon. The poor man's conditioned worsened. An MRI was ordered but never performed. The doctors' failure to notice this bleeding and their general negligence led to Baldridge suffering an aneurysm. This led to his paralysis and the amputation of several of his toes. Sadly the patient now suffers from chronic and debilitating pain. The hospital and the doctors settled his claim of medical malpractice for $20.6 million dollars. One would venture to guess that Baldridge would be willing to give up every penny of that settlement to be able to move freely without hindrance or pain.

How Medical Malpractice Works

There are a few instances that immediately remind the public at large of a pending lawsuit. The principal amongst these seemingly cartoonish situations is the notorious instance of slipping and falling on a wet floor in a store. Those who do truly injure themselves on slick surfaces would argue that there is nothing cartoonish about their injuries. An elderly individual can fall and break a hip, which can lead to many serious health issues, sometimes even death. Even those cases the media labels as "cartoonish" can involve nefariously negligent details and serious injuries.

The infamous case of the woman who was scalded by coffee at McDonald's is an example of this. While folks laughed at the seemingly frivolous lawsuit, the details tell a different story. Her coffee had been heated and stored at boiling point (if spilled this would cause third degree burns in seven seconds) and that McDonald's admitted to doing this and admitted that they knew customers were being burned. The elderly woman in question almost died and required extensive surgeries.

The Illinois case, while not as famous, involves similar accusations of negligence by those operating the Casey's General Store in Highland, Illinois. A 52-year-old man named James Latkins slipped on what he recalls as a clear liquid on the floor of the store, injuring himself. The store argued that there was nothing on the floor, and used video footage of the plaintiff and his girlfriend walking around comfortably before the fall. This testimony was refuted when an EMT testified that when they arrived the store clerk told them that another customer had spilled something on the floor and they had yet to clean it up. Latkins was awarded $550,000 for loss of quality of life and pain and suffering.

Every day we go about our daily business, and we often forget about how much we are at the mercy of businesses and other entities to perform basic maintenance on their property. This can mean complex repairs (elevator maintenance) to simple maintenance such as making sure sidewalks and driveways clear of snow and ice. For some, an outing as simple as going to the grocery store can result in serious injuries.

For one woman this became a sad reality. Sharon Jordan went to the grocery store Food 4 Less expecting a normal day of shopping. Her mundane errands soon turned into a painful accident when she fell in the parking lot of Food 4 Less. Jordan broke her ankle in the fall. After her accident, she filed suit. In the discovery process, her counsel found out about a company called Pete's Lawn Care, and they were added to the suit.

What followed was a grueling litigation process. She brought her case to a Cook County trial court. She accuses the defendants of not monitoring the weather conditions (negligence) and that had they done so, it would have prevented the accumulation of snow and ice. The judge disagreed with Jordan's arguments and granted summary judgement for the defendants, The Kroger Co. d/b/a Foods 4 Less. Jordan's case went up to the Illinois First District Appellate Court. The appellate court upheld the lower court's ruling, and plaintiff's case went by the wayside.

Suing OSF Healthcare and a neurosurgeon in 2009, a Poplar Grove woman, Mary Friday, alleged that the doctor left her disabled by operating on the wrong side of her body. The case moved to trial nine years later.

Though the woman's attorneys must first prove an error occurred during the surgery, the lawsuit does not involve a claim of medical malpractice, but proceeds on the little-used and challenging-to-prove claim of negligent credentialing. It essentially concerns the negligent hospital system that allowed an unqualified, incompetent doctor to practice there.

The plaintiff's attorneys cited 17 counts of unprofessional conduct (involving 17 patients from 1997 through 2004) filed against neurosurgeon Denise Crute in 2005 by the Colorado State Board of Medical Examiners as evidence of OSF's negligence. The allegations include performing wrong-side surgeries and falsifying medical records.