The first crisis I ever ran was for a Department of Energy nuclear contractor in 1996, across 70 federal sites. I was on the inside that time, and I learned how a large organization gets ready for bad news. It does not wait for the news. By the time anyone outside knows there's a problem, the statements are drafted, the experts are briefed and the monitoring has been running for months. I have spent the 29 years since on the plaintiff side, and I have never once seen a big defendant skip that work.
None of this is secret and none of it is improper. It is how companies manage risk. The point of describing it is that most of it leaves marks in the public record, and anyone willing to spend an afternoon can see them.
A company with a product problem usually has a firm monitoring news, social media and search traffic about it. When adverse event reports or regulator letters start to cluster, that firm flags it and the drafting begins. I have seen this start a year or more ahead of the first lawsuit. If you file today, assume the other side has been reading about your clients since last fall.
That's why it comes back within the hour and why it reads the same in every outlet. I keep a file of what each defendant said in its last several matters. The new statement is almost always the old one with the product name changed. Knowing that lets us write the response before we need it.
A company doesn't want its own name on every quote. Trade associations, academics, former regulators and the trade press get briefed early, so when a reporter wants a voice that isn't a party, one is waiting and already familiar with the company's position. When I see the same professor quoted in three trade stories about a product, I look up who funds the professor. It usually takes about an hour.
Type a product name with the word "lawsuit" into a clean browser and look at what comes up above the fold. Paid placements. Pages built to rank. Sometimes a site that looks like an independent patient-information resource and isn't. Your potential clients see that page first. So do reporters doing background. I check this for every matter I'm asked to look at, and I write down what I find with the date, because it changes.
I told the trash story in another post and I'll tell it again here, because it's the one people don't believe until it happens to them. If a defendant will send someone through the communications consultant's garbage, it has already pulled every public post your named plaintiff ever made. Some of that will show up in a motion. Some of it will show up in a background call to a reporter. It is far better to know what's out there before they use it.
I read the record from our direction before we file. Prior statements. The search results, recorded. The third parties who've spoken for the company before. The plaintiffs' own public record. It takes days, not months, and it's what my free 12-hour check covers, in writing, with dates and sources. Two years of training with Vincent Covello taught me that the side that knows what the audience already believes is the side that gets to change it. The defendant knows. I want you to know too.