Ohio Vaccine Lawyer

The team at Widman Law Firm is prepared to file claims for vaccine related injuries taking place in the State of Ohio. The admission required to bring vaccine injury claims in front of the Court of Federal Claims, where vaccine injury claims are filed and heard, is a federal admission. Phyllis Widman, Esq. is thereby fully admitted to bring vaccine injury claims in all 50 states and D.C., including Ohio. Whether you are in Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Toledo, Cleveland, Youngstown, Canton, Lima, or anywhere in between, Widman Law Firm is prepared to provide you and your family with high quality legal representation for your vaccine injury claim.

As a result of public outcry about the Pertussis vaccine and a rising number of lawsuits against its manufacturers, drug companies threatened to stop producing crucial inoculations, citing high risk. To protect those companies and to ensure the continued production of vaccines, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986. This Act aimed to protect vaccine manufacturers from liability by establishing a federal “no-fault” system whereby people could be compensated for vaccine-related injuries. This system is called the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, VICP, or more colloquially, “vaccine court”.

The VICP has compensated vaccine-injured people a collective $4.4 BILLION dollars as of 2023, and that number continues to grow.

To have a legitimate claim for compensation in the VICP, the petitioner must meet the following requirements: they must have received a vaccine covered by the VICP; they must have sustained an injury listed on the Vaccine Injury Table; and the injury must have occurred within the specified timeframe.

The VICP covers commonly administered vaccines, such as those for:

• Seasonal flu
• Haemophilus influenza type b polysaccharide conjugate (Hib)
• Hepatitis A and B
• Combinations of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella
• Polio
• Pneumococcal Conjugate (PCV)
• Combinations of Pertussis, Tetanus, and Diphtheria
• And more

Some of the injuries which commonly appear in vaccine court:

• SIRVA, a term representing multiple injuries affecting the shoulder
• ADEM, an autoimmune, neurological condition
• GBS, an autoimmune, neurological condition
• CIDP, the more severe version of GBS

The VICP hears cases from all 50 states; that said, cases are almost exclusively handled via video and telephone conferences, with petitioners rarely needing to appear in court. Further, the VICP pays petitioners’ attorneys fees - even if their case is dismissed - as long as their claim was legitimate and filed in good faith. This is so that attorneys do not take a portion of their clients’ compensation, which is meant to be used exclusively for medical costs, cost of living expenses, pain and suffering, and the reimbursement of lost income.

By the mid-2000’s, fear of terror attacks in the States had reached a fever-pitch, and while the U.S. Government anticipated increasingly unconventional types of terrorism, drug manufacturers prepared to develop countermeasures against potential chemical, biological, and radiological warfare. The issue was, while the VICP afforded drug companies immunity from liability for some vaccines, it didn’t cover every one, and it only covered vaccines. Not only would manufacturers have no liability protection from the federal government for these countermeasures, due to their likely expedited nature in the face of a national emergency, any new countermeasure developed to combat these types of attacks would spend less time in trials and, therefore, mean greater risk for the drug companies.

After some lobbying in Washington from manufacturers, Congress passed the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act in 2005, protecting those companies from being sued for injuries arising from emergency countermeasures. In turn, the PREP Act established the CICP, or the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program: the system by which people could be compensated for countermeasure-related damages.

The CICP laid in relative dormancy until countermeasures developed against COVID-19 saw widespread application; to date, over 95% of claims filed in the CICP have been COVID-related.

Of the COVID-countermeasure claims filed, the COVID-19 vaccine represented the majority of those claims.

While the CICP is not a legal system, and therefore does not reimburse claimants’ legal fees like the VICP, it is still advised to proceed with a specialized personal injury attorney if you decide to file a claim in the CICP.

The CICP can pay out up to $379,000 in lost income (limited to $50,000 annually), as well as the reimbursement of medical expenses related to the injury. If a death resulted from a countermeasure covered under the CICP, a death benefit of up to $370,000 may be awarded. The CICP does not pay an award for pain and suffering.

Unlike other law firms, the team at Widman Law Firm has specialized in vaccine injury cases from the very start. We’ve won our clients millions of dollars in much-needed compensation, giving them the means to continue treatment and to continue to have quality of life.

We’ve fought for them, and we’re prepared to fight for you.

Give us a call or send us an email to find out how we can start filing your vaccine injury claim in the VICP, or your COVID vaccine claim in the CICP, today.

Don’t wait - there is a strict statute of limitations of three (3) years from the onset of symptoms to be eligible to file a VICP claim, and only ONE (1) year from the administration of an emergency countermeasure to file in the CICP.