Merck Vioxx Litigation Score Card

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By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 3 of 9 page(s)

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"Looking through their evidence," she stated, "time after time, you could see where they knew about the CV events and how important it was and they didn't do anything about it."

"That's what made up my mind," Ms Wade told CNN.

Under Texas law, the punitive damage award in the Ernst case will be cut substantially and Merck has announced its intention to appeal the verdict.

In the next trial, on November 3, 2005, Merck won a favorable verdict when a New Jersey jury found the company was not liable for the non-fatal heart attack in 2001,of Federick Humeston, a Boise, Idaho postal carrier who had taken Vioxx for about two months.

Mr Humeston alleged that his use of Vioxx caused a blood clot to form in his leg, which in turn caused his heart attack. The New Jersey jury disagreed.

However, in August 2006, New Jersey Judge, Carol Higbee, threw out the verdict that favored Merck and ordered a new trial based on new evidence involving allegations made in the December 2005, New England Journal of Medicine, that said Merck had deleted data about 3 heart attacks among patients who had participated in the Vioxx VIGOR trial.

The original and incorrectly stated results of the VIGOR trial were published in the same medical journal in 2000.

On August 17, 2006, the Seeger Weiss LLP law firm announced in a press release that the verdict in favor of Merck had been vacated after oral argument in the New Jersey Superior Court. "The Honorable Carol E. Higbee ruled that the November 2005 trial verdict should be vacated on various grounds," Seeger Wiess said in the press release, "including findings by the New England Journal of Medicine that Merck had failed to report material cardiovascular safety data in connection with the publication of its landmark Vioxx clinical study know as Vigor."

"The judge's ruling," Seeger Weiss said, "nullifies the verdict for all purposes, and will allow plaintiff, Frederick "Mike" Humeston, a new day in court."

Seeger Weiss partners Christopher Seeger and David Buchanan argued the vacatur motion at the hearing. In response to the decision, Mr Seeger stated: "It was difficult for our trial team to hear Merck's witnesses repeatedly distort the truth about the Vigor study results."

"The judge's ruling today," he said, "corrects just the latest injustice committed on the entire Humeston family by Merck and ratifies the proper functioning of the judicial process."

This is not good news for Merck's legal defense team because since the conclusion of the first trial, even more studies have surfaced that show the risks associated with Vioxx can occur almost as soon as a person starts taking the drug.

According to a study by Canadian researchers, Vioxx can raise the risk of heart attacks in less than two weeks. The researchers found that over 25% of 239 elderly patients who had heart attacks while using Vioxx, did so within six to 13 days, according to the study published online on May 2, 2006, by the Canadian Medical Association Journal

And there is more bad news for the Merck team from researchers at the University of Newcastle in Australia in a study released this month, which determined that the heart attack risks are most pronounced in the first month after patients begin taking Vioxx.

A second study that was also released this month by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, based on 114 trials involving more than 116,000 patients, found a 2.9-fold increased risk for arrhythmia with Vioxx users, a 43% increased risk of peripheral edema (swelling of the arms and legs), a 55% increased risk of hypertension, and a 2.3-fold increased risk of adverse kidney events in Vioxx users.

The latter two studies will be published in the October 4, 2006 print edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, but were released online a month ahead of publication.

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Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for OpEd News and investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

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