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When corporations put their profit before your safety, the attorneys at Searcy Denney work to hold them accountable.

The headlines are everywhere: painkiller Vioxx makes billions relieving pain while triggering heart attacks; Bausch & Lomb recalls a contact lens solution only after users contract potentially blinding eye infections; Big Tobacco laces its deadly cigarettes with more addictive nicotine; and Big Automobile Manufacturers ignore defects that cause SUV roofs to crush the brains of drivers and passengers.

There may have been a time when we could trust big corporations – the household brand names of our childhood memories. We could count on them to invest in our health and safety rather than inflated CEO salaries, lavish perks, and just plain greed.

But those times are over.

Government regulation of Corporate America’s disregard of consumer safety has been lackadaisical at best. The ongoing debate is, just how much money can the federal government demand be spent in order to save a life?

In order to justify health and safety regulations that force big corporations to spend money making their products safer, here’s what some federal agencies have decided is the value of a single life:

  • The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says one life saved is worth mandating spending $9.1 million on stricter air pollution standards.
  • The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided that one life is worth imposing warning labels on cigarettes with images of cancer victims – up to $7.9 million in industry costs.
  • The US Department of Transportation (DOT) justifies more stringent roof-crush standards for cars by setting the value of a single life at $6 million.

These valuations are up $2 million to $3 million over the price tags set by the Bush Administration, so it will come as no surprise that Corporate America is hopping mad. While the Office of Management and Budget claims that cost-benefit analyses are based on the best available science, one industry critic has charged that the Obama Administration is “cooking the books.” Now the US Chamber of Commerce wants to put these determinations in the hands of a Congress controlled by Big Business instead of more objective number-crunchers.

At Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, we believe that every single life is priceless – and that even one life lost to corporate greed is too many.

We still believe that corporations have a responsibility, a moral obligation, to consumers of their products. They have an obligation to design their products with care, and to conduct diligent testing. When their products don’t meet standards that protect our health and safety - and, in fact, demonstrate a capacity for killing and maiming – Corporate America has an obligation to disclose the facts and keep its defective products off the market.

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The attorneys at Searcy Denney have represented countless clients against even the largest and most powerful corporations that put their profit before your safety:

  • A Jacksonville couple who endured severe, repeated termite invasions of their home because Orkin Exterminating, Inc. failed to obtain the legally-required permits and inspections for repair work.
  • The family of a star high school student who was crushed in an SUV rollover, his promising future erased by severe brain injuries that left him on a ventilator. It was determined that the cause of the roof collapse was a defect of which General Motors had long been aware.
  • A woman who witnessed the fiery death of her husband and three young children because a trucking company kept an unqualified and impaired truck driver on the road in violation of Federal and Florida laws.
  • The victim of a gross prescription error by a Walgreens Pharmacy, which put a breast cancer patient into a coma from cerebral hemorrhage instead of augmenting her cancer treatment.

We invite you to find out about the settlements and verdicts we have gained for clients whose lives were devastated because a corporation negligently disregarded their health or safety. If a loved one has died, or you or a family member has been injured, because a corporation has put its profit over your safety, please fill out our Contact Form to learn more, or call us to arrange a confidential free consultation.