Monday, January 26, 2009

Questions for voir dire

The folks over at Drug and Device Law Blog have posted an interesting short comment on questions you should ask possible jurors in a drug and device case. The first one is: "Has your confidence in the FDA increased, decreased, or stayed about the same in recent years?" This is a fair question and probably a good one to ask whether you are representing a plaintiff or a defendant. Another set of questions, which they say they heard a federal judge suggest for the defense in drug product liability cases, is: "Are you currently taking any medications? Do you need those medicines? Do they help you? Do you know how much money the drug company spent to develop that drug? Do you understand that, although the drug is helping you, the drug has possible side effects? Do you understand that every drug has possible side effects?" What do you think of these? Is it fair to ask a juror about their use of pharmaceuticals or is it too much of an invasion of privacy? By the way, in response to the post someone posted a long comment very critical of the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry. It is not exactly on the same subject as the original post but worth reading. It is available here (scroll down to the comments).

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