Drug Injury Litigation

Drug injury litigation is a subset of mass tort practice focused on prescription pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter medications. Claims typically allege design defect, manufacturing defect, failure to warn, negligent misrepresentation, breach of express or implied warranty, and—under state consumer protection statutes—deceptive marketing. Federal preemption doctrine, particularly under Wyeth v. Levine and PLIVA v. Mensing, controls when state-law claims survive against branded versus generic manufacturers. Successful drug injury cases require strong general causation epidemiology, plausible specific causation in individual plaintiffs, and a documented warning gap between what the manufacturer knew and what physicians were told. TortSignal tracks the pharmaceutical pipeline of emerging drug injury claims, scoring each based on FDA signal strength, scientific publication velocity, and MDL formation likelihood.