Manhattan, New York (NewYorkInjuryNews.com) — The pharmaceutical industry, as many already know, is engaged in constant battle to deprive patients injured by defective prescription medications their day in court.
The industry’s argument is as follows: a dysfunctional justice system deprives America’s youth of essential vaccines. Abusive personal injury lawyers extract punitive verdicts against selfless vaccine manufacturers from unthinking, sympathetic juries. Such verdicts drive vaccines from the market.
The reality, of course, is very different. After heavy lobbying, Congress conferred virtual immunity to drug companies for vaccination-related injuries by passing the Vaccine Act of 1986.
The Vaccine Act mandates that those injured by vaccines file a petition in special federal “Vaccine Courts” as a condition precedent to bringing a civil suit. In Vaccine Court, subject to a strict three-year limitations period (even for minors), cases are tried without a jury before a special master. Although its backers tout Vaccine Court as a “no-fault system,” suggesting easy recovery, petitioners are routinely denied compensation. Medical experts called by patients to prove their injuries resulting from vaccines are subjected to scrutiny by the Court, and, quite often, are precluded from testifying.
This is true even when the injury involved is listed on the “Vaccine Table,” a schedule of illnesses presumed, under law, to be caused by inoculations. Even if a petitioner “wins” in this “special” court, damages in the most serious cases (death) are capped at $250,000. Additional statutory protections shield vaccine manufacturers should the case end up, years later, in state or federal court.
NewYorkInjuryNews.com Legal News Reporter
