Personal injury lawsuits are filed by an injured person over car accidents, slips and falls, or other kinds of injury against the person or company allegedly responsible for the accident. A Norton Rose Fulbright 2015 Litigation Trends Annual Survey reported that personal injury litigation is significantly more prevalent in the US than in other countries. Personal injury lawyers help victims of vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, and other types of negligence to get compensation for their injuries.
A personal injury case that grabbed the world’s attention, the Pinnacle hip bellwether lawsuit has headed to trial for the third time. Manufactured by DePuy, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, the Pinnacle metal-on-metal artificial hips include metal in their various components. The use of metal was supposed to overcome the problem of device failure because of overuse. However, lawsuits have been filed by thousands of people against Johnson & Johnson, with the plaintiffs alleging that they were harmed by these metal-on-metal hip systems. According to Drugwatch, the problems with the DePuy Pinnacle include faulty design, leading to an increased failure rate, metallosis, infection, dislocation and immobility.
In October 2014, Johnson & Johnson won the first Pinnacle bellwether trial that involved a single plaintiff, though the company had paid an estimated amount of $4 billion in claims for its DePuy ASR hip implant in 2013. It lost the second Pinnacle defective hip lawsuit and was ordered to pay $502 million in damages in March 2016. The plaintiffs said that DePuy hid the Pinnacle’s design flaws, leading to early device failure and causing pain and complications that needed further surgery to fix. The third Pinnacle hip bellwether lawsuit got underway in September 2016 with seven cases under trial in the Northern District of Texas. According to a Drugwatch report, over 8,500 federal cases are pending in multidistrict litigation (MDL), and these bellwether trials represent the claims of the entire MDL.
A personal injury lawsuit involves multiple legal pleadings, courtroom sessions, motions, objections during trial, administrative hearings, depositions, interrogatories (Q&A) and testimonies. Documentation requirements would increase as appeals drag on as in the Pinnacle bellwether trial. Personal injury lawyers require timely and accurate documentation of these events to identify any contradiction between the testimony given by the witness at the deposition and at the trial, and other matters pertinent to the case. Even minor errors in a transcript can affect the outcome of the trial. This is why personal injury attorneys usually opt for professional legal transcription service companies to obtain transcripts of dictated reports. These companies have expert transcriptionists with excellent keyboarding skills who can
- Produce complex texts from audio transcription
- Write complex documents
- Provide accurate transcripts in fast turnaround time
- Use legal terminology in order to carry out tasks
- Evaluate and present research information
With the right legal transcription outsourcing company, personal injury attorneys can handle their transcription efficiently and cost-effectively, cut investment in infrastructure, and improve workflow.
