Merck Planning To Fight 5,000 Vioxx Cases

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The New York Sun

Even before last week’s $253 million jury verdict against Merck & Company, the number of Vioxx cases facing the company had climbed to nearly 5,000, according to the figures presented yesterday at a federal court in New Orleans.


Amid the rising number of lawsuits, Merck’s general counsel reiterated in an interview that the company will continue to fight every case and that it is learning from its experience in the first trial.


The tally of product liability and purported class-action suits over Merck’s withdrawn painkiller Vioxx was calculated at a hearing in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. According to the figures, Merck faced 4,951 state and federal product liability and purported class-action suits involving Vioxx as of August 15, up from about 4,295 cases as of July 11.


Lawyers believe last Friday’s verdict against Merck – which is expected to be reduced to around $26 million under Texas law – will encourage still more lawsuits against the Whitehouse Station, N.J., drug company. The number of lawsuits filed since the verdict couldn’t be determined.


Merck’s general counsel, Kenneth Frazier, said in an interview, “We have to do it better than we did in Angleton,” referring to the Angleton, Texas, courthouse where Merck lost the first Vioxx case to go to trial. “Each time we do this, we learn and hope to sharpen our approaches.”


Some jurors complained that Merck’s scientific explanations sailed over their heads.


Mr. Frazier said, “We are learning as we go along about how best to present evidence to juries composed of lay people.”


Another of the jurors’ complaints was that senior Merck officials, including the company’s former chief executive, Raymond Gilmartin, did not come in person, and instead their videotaped depositions were shown.


Mr. Frazier said complaints like those will be taken “into consideration as we plan our roster of witnesses” for subsequent cases.


The Angleton trial was in state court. The wave of federal Vioxx cases has been consolidated into a multi-district litigation in the Eastern District of Louisiana, where Judge Eldon Fallon is conducting the coordinated pretrial proceedings. In multi-district litigation, discovery is consolidated and organized by a federal judge in order to streamline the process of trying large numbers of similar court cases.


Yesterday, Judge Fallon laid down a template for the first several federal trials. He directed both sides to come up with a list of categories of cases to be tried in the federal court in Louisiana.


The New York Sun

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