Legal Question in Personal Injury in Texas

Re: Fish Oil Fiasco

You are correct, manufacturers do have a duty in Texas to warn of potential risks of their products that they know of or should have known. I am familiar with the JAMA article, and in fact the American Heart Association discussed this very issue at a meeting in Dallas last year.

If you have the product label, we would be happy to review it and have our medical experts review your son's records. Please feel free to contact us.

Michelle Wan

Re: Fish Oil Fiasco

I'm very sorry to hear about your son's medical complications. First and foremost, to have a case against the manufacturer of this product, you must have a doctor (probably a cardiologist) to be willing to state under oath in an affidavit (and later to testify in court) that "in reasonable medical probability" it was the supplement, or combination of the supplements, that caused your son's heart problems. It can't just be an "educated guess" on your part that this is what must have happened. Secondly, the doctor would have to be very specific that it was the failure of the manufacturer of this product to post an adequate warning label that caused your son's medical condition to worsen, and that your son took the supplement in exactly the manner and dosage prescribed by the directions on the product. In other words, if the "directions" said take two tablets but your son took four, this might possibly let the manufacturer off. The doctor must be very specific in stating that, taken exactly as directed on the bottle, this product was dangerous to patients having an implanted cardiac defibrillator.

Products liabililty cases, particularly against drug or supplement manufacturers, are difficult cases and hinge on the willingness of a credible physician to stick his neck out for his patient and state in no uncertain terms that the product itself, or the manufacture or distribution or labeling thereof, was negligent and that it was this negligence that caused your son's medical problems to worsen.