Baum Hedlund attorneys have testified four times before the government about the risks of antidepressants -- twice before the FDA's Psychopharmacologic Drugs and Pediatric Advisory Committee's public hearings and once before the California's State Senate hearing about the risks of children taking antidepressants in 2004. They also testified at the FDA's Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee meeting in 2006 concerning the FDA’s Review of Suicidality Data in Adult Antidepressant Studies.
Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman has the longest track-record handling SSRI antidepressant litigation, having litigated over 3,000 antidepressant cases in the past 17 years. We have a large team of plaintiffs attorneys handling the SSRI birth defect litigation. The attorneys working on the heart birth defect and PPHN cases at Baum Hedlund are Kate E. Gillespie, Roger D. Drake, George W. Murgatroyd III (of counsel) and senior partners Michael L. Baum and Ronald L. M. Goldman.
The firm maintains the highest AV® peer review legal rating and is recognized as a preeminent plaintiff firm that tries or settles serious personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits across the nation.
Focusing a major part of its practice on drug product liability, the firm has been representing victims of defective drugs since the late 1980s. Since 1990 Baum Hedlund has been handling SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) antidepressant cases and served on the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee in the early 1990s in the first SSRI-suicide litigation involving Prozac (the first SSRI approved by the FDA for marketing in the U.S.).
Baum Hedlund litigates defective pharmaceutical products and has served on plaintiffs' steering committees that manage the complex multi-district litigation arising from pharmaceutical and drug manufacturer negligence.
The firm has filed lawsuits and currently represents families of children from across the United States who have suffered PPHN and heart birth defects due to their mothers' use of antidepressants during pregnancy.
Baum Hedlund has filed Paxil suicide lawsuits across the country involving both children and adults including a nationwide class action involving suicide by youths.
Past efforts by Baum Hedlund and others have resulted in improvements in drug safety including the most recent FDA black box suicide warning issued on certain antidepressants. The firm’s efforts get innocent victims compensated when duties are neglected or willfully disregarded. Hundreds of individual clients and thousands of class claimants from every state in the United States and 5 of the 7 continents have been successfully represented by Baum Hedlund.
Baum Hedlund has been on the prevailing side of some of the nation's most highly-publicized cases. Such litigation involves complex evidence and choice of law issues which have been routinely handled by the firm in both state and federal courts. Many of their attorneys have delivered Continuing Legal Education accredited lectures and written articles on the many complex issues involved in pharmaceutical litigation. Baum Hedlund is accustomed to handling the simplest and most complex cases: and are here to solve legal problems caused by negligent conduct.
The firm was established more than 30 years ago and has offices in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. They have represented victims of personal injury and wrongful death for over 20 years and their attorneys have tried well over 200 cases in their careers.
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Heading a team of Baum Hedlund attorneys, firm partner and award-winning attorney, Karen Barth Menzies, has successfully defeated drug company and the FDA's preemption arguments in a number of cases, including Motus v. Pfizer and Witczak v. Pfizer. She heads the firm's Pharmaceutical Antidepressant Litigation Department and is Lead Counsel for the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee (MDL-1574) Paxil Products Liability Litigation. For more than a decade, she has been handling SSRI-induced suicide/violence litigation involving Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and more recently PPHN and heart birth defect cases.
In addition to her court activities, Karen has testified about the dangers of SSRIs before the California State Senate and the Food and Drug Administration’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee and met with members of the U.S. House and Senate regarding the risk of antidepressant induced suicidality. She assisted Congressional Investigators from two separate Committee investigations with follow-up information, doing all she could to assist their investigation, which later resulted in two Congressional hearings at which pharmaceutical executives and FDA officials were interrogated and chastised for failing to protect the public health.
In 2004 Ms. Menzies was named Lawyer of the Year by Lawyer’s Weekly and California Lawyer of the Year by California Lawyer magazine. In 2005 Karen was named one of The National Law Journal’s Top 40 Under 40 for her "extraordinary achievements" and "impressive track record" for "stepping up her fight in the past few years, advocating that pharmaceutical companies should warn about the alleged risks of antidepressant drugs." The Consumer Attorneys of California also named Karen as a finalist for Consumer Attorney of the Year for 2006.
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