What is a Mass Tort?
You may have heard the phrase "Mass Torts," which refers to cases against one or a few defendants by many plaintiffs who suffered a similar injury related to particularly similar conduct by the defendant. As an example, suppose a large drug company fails to adequately test its new headache drug called "SuperPill" before putting it on the market. Thousands of people take SuperPill to fight their headaches, but what they don’t know is that SuperPill causes liver cancer. There might be thousands of potential victims who all have a claim against the drug company for the negligent manufacture of SuperPill. Each person’s case is different in many ways, but all stem from the same negligent act of the drug company. This is a called a mass tort because of the size of the potential claimant pool.
Just because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves a drug, it does not mean that it is a safe drug. As one leader in the FDA recently told Congress, "The FDA system for drug evaluation and research is broken." Congress is currently investigating the FDA to determine how they could allow so many drugs to escape the safety radar and cause so many injuries to an unsuspecting public.
A recent Consumer Reports investigation revealed that there are numerous dangerous drugs on the market. These drugs account for more than 250 million prescriptions in the U.S. and almost $25 billion in sales in any 12-month period, and may cause dangerous side effects leading to serious illness and death. The Public Citizen, a think-tank and consumer advocacy organization, issues new warnings almost weekly of serious illness and death caused by prescription drugs. In many cases the drug companies responsible for marketing these drugs had prior knowledge of the dangerous side effects, but failed to warn the consumer taking the drug or the public at large.