My mother died from complications due to a heart problem. She was taking
Vioxx had a heart attack and was given a pacemaker. According to the doctors
she got salmonella poisoning and because the infection attached itself to
the wires of the pacemaker it killed her.

Question: this happened to her in Montreal Canada. I live in the USA. Should
I use a US lawyer or a Canadian one? Also does the diagnosis of what killed
her sound right? She was very strong and in good spirits. Within 2 days she
was dead.

"SJH" <reply_to_me@at_this_newsgroup.com> wrote in message
news:<nvtqo0dqq6rt1p5vnt9vqnpb04i6s1macn@4ax.com>... My mother died from complications due to a heart problem. She was taking Vioxx had a heart attack and was given a pacemaker. According to the doctors she got salmonella poisoning and because the infection attached itself to the wires of the pacemaker it killed her. Question: this happened to her in Montreal Canada. I live in the USA. Should I use a US lawyer or a Canadian one? Also does the diagnosis of what killed her sound right? She was very strong and in good spirits. Within 2 days she was dead.

Consult a personal injury lawyer near your home. It will be much more
convenient for you to be geographically close to your lawyer. If your
lawyer determines he needs to bring in an expert in Vioxx cases to
handle the investigation and suit, and/or a Canadian lawyer in the
event suit needs to be filed there, he will handle these details for
you and there should be no extra fee above the percentage you agree to
with your first lawyer. Your local lawyer may be your main contact
point with the "expert" or out-of-town lawyer or may, if you prefer,
simply hand the case off to the other lawyer to work on it from there.
My condolences for your loss, and good luck on your product
liability claim,

--
This posting is for discussion purposes, not professional advice.
Anything you post on this Newsgroup is public information.
I am not your lawyer, and you are not my client in any specific legal
matter.
For confidential professional advice, consult your own lawyer in a
private communication.

Mike Jacobs
LAW OFFICE OF W. MICHAEL JACOBS
10440 Little Patuxent Pkwy #300
Columbia, MD 21044
(tel) 410-740-5685 (fax) 410-740-4300

"SJH" <reply_to_me@at_this_newsgroup.com> wrote in message
news:<nvtqo0dqq6rt1p5vnt9vqnpb04i6s1macn@4ax.com>... My mother died from complications due to a heart problem. She was taking Vioxx had a heart attack and was given a pacemaker. According to the doctors she got salmonella poisoning and because the infection attached itself to the wires of the pacemaker it killed her. Question: this happened to her in Montreal Canada. I live in the USA. Should I use a US lawyer or a Canadian one? Also does the diagnosis of what killed her sound right? She was very strong and in good spirits. Within 2 days she was dead.

I'm so sorry for your loss. It must have come as a shock to you.

Start with a personal-injury lawyer who does medical malpractice
cases, as any case such as yours is going to be technical and require
expert testimony to prove anything. You might as well get advice
locally first, as a local attorney can advise you as to whether it is
possible to pursue the case locally.

Canada has well-developed medical malpractice law and competitive med
mal lawyers, so you are not necessarily at a disadvantage if the case
ends up in Montreal.

Pacemaker lead infections are uncommon, but when they occur they are
life-or-death emergencies. An infection can travel up the pacemaker
lead into the heart, resulting in endocarditis (if the bacteria settle
in the heart) or more rarely bacteremia and distant infections (if the
bacteria are pumped out in the blood). So the diagnosis is at least
plausible; and if this is what happened, even the best of care is not
always going to succeed.

Two questions that seem well worth exploring with a lawyer and any
experts he calls in would be:

* Whether the chain of causation (Vioxx - heart problem - pacemaker -
infection) meets the specialized standards that obtain in drug
liability and med mal cases.

* How Salmonella got onto the pacemaker leads. Most pacemaker
infections are from the Staphylococcus species occuring naturally on
skin. Salmonella is a really rare agent of such an infection.

The presence of Salmonella hints at an unusual chain of causation, as
another poster has pointed out. Salmonella has ingenious ways of
getting loose in the body and of maintaining itself once it is there:
many Salmonellas are insidious parasites exquisitely adapted to their
hosts (think Typhoid Mary).

One possibility is a Salmonella infection resulting in reactive
arthritis (formerly called Reiter's syndrome). If misdiagnosed,
doctors will miss the Salmonella, which settles in and becomes
chronic. Even if correctly diagnosed, doctors may not be able to
eradicate the Salmonella completely. One rare complication of reactive
arthritis is heart damage; when this occurs, it often takes the form
of a conduction block requiring a pacemaker. But now you have the
conditions required for a Salmonella infection on the pacemaker leads.

So at least one part of the Vioxx causation argument (that Vioxx was
the cause of the heart attack requiring the pacemaker) will need
support sufficient to make it probable in light of at least one
plausible alternative.

--
Neither a lawyer nor a doctor, but I taught bacteriology long enough
to know at least some of what I wrote,

Chris Green