4 Ways To Get Ahead on Your Medical Device Case

One of the biggest mistakes people make with a medical device injury claim in Florida is not preserving the defective product, called an explant. When an implant is replaced, the explant, the old part, should be preserved as evidence because, many times, the explant will have evidence of the defect. Most times and many times, that explant is not preserved because of burial hazard issues and things of that nature, but at all costs, if you particularly think you have a medical device injury claim that you should preserve the old product and many hospitals and doctors would be willing to do that for you, but you have to ask in advance. Be sure to preserve the evidence. It’s very critical in these cases.

If your medical device was recalled, that’s evidence that the device was defective, which can be used to support a claim of a defective medical device. It may depend, however, on the length of time the device has been in your body. Most microdevices have a life expectancy based on the state you live in at the time. If it’s somewhere between 10 and 15 years and the device has been implanted longer than that, then the fact it’s been recalled may not be relevant to support a claim; if it’s been less than that, then obviously, it will support a claim. The fact that the device has been recalled is strong evidence that the device is defective and therefore would support a claim for medical device.

Florida allows compensation for multiple types of damages in medical device injury claims in Florida, such as what we call special damages, medical expenses, lost income, loss of ability to earn money, and things of that nature. That way you’ll have noneconomic damages as well that are compensable under Florida law to include pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of capacity to enjoy life, disability and disfigurement. All of these different types of damages are put into the hopper, so to speak, when we evaluate those claims because the jury is free to award these damages when there’s proof of them in a medical device injury claim.

The vast majority of medical device injury claims in Florida settle because most of them are combined with other injury claims all over the country in what’s known as multidistrict litigation. Very few of those cases actually go to trial unless there’s going to be some test cases that might be tried early on to give the two sides a better idea as to how the jury or the public views these types of claims. The chance of your case going to trial is small but not impossible here in Florida.