Most states’ statute of limitations to file a shoulder pain pump lawsuit are three years or less. So, what if your surgery took place five, six or seven years ago? Can you still file a lawsuit? To help us understand how statutes of limitation work, we asked Frank Woodson, an Alabama attorney whose firm represents patients injured by pain pumps.

Alabama Attorney Frank Woodson

In a recent interview, Woodson told us that one of the difficult things in these particular cases is determining when someone’s statute of limitations is running or began to run. He explained:

Many of these surgeries took place in early 2000s and most state statutes of limitations are two to three years. Now, obviously the injury did not just occur overnight for most people, it took several months, or possibly even a longer period of time, according to some medical literature that’s come out.

So, one of the big battles in these cases might be over the statute of limitations. However, most of these people did not know what occurred to them until they started seeing advertisements from lawyers who advertise for these cases. So, that’s the first time that they had any inkling in their mind that there could have been a connection between the use of a pain pump and what’s ultimately happened to their shoulder.

Pain pump doctors didn’t know either

Woodson says that doctors who performed these surgeries didn’t know about the risk of contracting PAGCL either. “Many physicians had no idea that pain pumps were dangerous until they started reading about some of these lawsuits. So, chances are that didn’t know, or couldn’t have known, about the connection between pain pumps and chondrolysis until they saw something on television. However, now that this information is out there, injured victims need to get to an attorney as quickly as possible.”

How a discovery statute helps

Some states have a discovery statute, which means that the statute of limitations doesn’t begin to run until you knew, or should have known, how your injury occurred. Woodson explained:

Some of the clients who have called our law firm had the surgery as far back as the year 2000. So, as soon as they contact us, we start doing an analysis of where that person lives and what statute of limitations is applicable in that state. Then we look to see if their state has a discovery statute – which generally means that their statute of limitations may not begin to run until they knew or, by taking reasonable efforts, should have known the connection between the pain pump and the injury that they have.

Woodson says that the best advice he can give someone who may have been injured due to a pain pump is to consult with an experienced pain pump attorney as soon as possible to avoid missing the statute of limitation deadline.