SEATTLE – Several publications have posted articles regarding Hagens Berman’s litigation on behalf of individuals who have lifelong disabilities they believe were caused by their mothers’ ingestion of thalidomide during their pregnancies. While we disagree with the analysis in the orders of the District Court which are quoted extensively in those articles, we will not argue those merits in the press. We instead encourage anyone interested in those issues to read our numerous court filings, and especially our recent petition to the Third Circuit.

We do, however, wish to address the suggestion in some publications that our firm is attempting to exit this litigation in an act of selfishness. We have not exited the thalidomide litigation and have no plans to do so. Even if the dismissals at issue before the District Court, and now at issue before the Third Circuit, are allowed, we will still be litigating in these cases on behalf of 27 plaintiffs. We will be doing so even though the District Court has indicated that it does not believe those cases have merit.

The reason we are doing so is that we firmly believe that our clients have a right to press their claims, and that the statute of limitation should be tolled on their claims. Our clients are real people who were born in the late 1950s and early 1960s with serious birth defects that have affected their entire lives. They were born with missing or malformed limbs, curved spines, missing organs and numerous other life-altering conditions, all apparently because drug companies distributed hundreds of thousands of pills of an untested medication into the American market without adequate labelling or any tracking of who took the pills.

We firmly believe that until recent revelations of the scope of that distribution, and the evolution of expertise on what sorts of injuries can be linked to thalidomide, none of our current plaintiffs could have brought suit, even if some of them have suspected for years that their injuries might be attributable to the drug. But our clients have a right to be heard, and we continue to represent them.

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About Hagens Berman
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP is a consumer-rights class-action law firm with offices in nine cities. The firm has been named to the National Law Journal’s Plaintiffs’ Hot List eight times. More about the law firm and its successes can be found at www.hbsslaw.com. Follow the firm for updates and news at @ClassActionLaw.

Media Contact
Ashley Klann
[email protected]
206-268-9363