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Merck and the Vioxx Decision: Playing by the Changing Rules of the Chemical Exposure Game

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Jacqueline G. Cohen
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Extract

For years, legal scholars and environmental activists have maintained that traditional tort proof requirements create insurmountable obstacles to recovery for most plaintiffs in chemical exposure cases, be they pharmaceutical suits or environmental toxic tort cases. Generally, tort law requires a plaintiff to show that the defendant owed a duty, that the defendant breached that duty, and that the breach of that duty caused the injury that is the subject of the suit. In some cases those requirements can be relaxed, as for example, when an injury is of a type that does not occur except as a result of negligence (under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitor).

Type
Recent Developments in Health Law
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Winter 2005 , pp. 866 - 869
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2005

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References

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