Merck Gets Victory as Class-Action Suit Struck Down
Drug manufacturer Merck, maker of the defective arthritis drug Vioxx, has been looking for any sign that the company may not have to part with the $685 million they have set aside for legal defense in the class-action and individual lawsuits filed against them by consumers who experienced personal injury or lost loved ones as a result of the drug's defects.
And now, they have a small glimpse of hope.
The New Jersey Supreme Court has issued a ruling that strikes down a potential class-action lawsuit that could have seen Merck paying out over $18 billion in compensation. Needless to say, the decision is a major victory for Merck.
In a reversal of decisions passed on by two lower courts, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that a national class-action suit was not appropriate in this case. A union health plan brought the lawsuit on behalf of insurance companies that had paid for the drug.
The lawyer for the plaintiffs will now pursue individual lawsuits, as Merck has desired. However, some do not see this course as a clear-cut victory for Merck, who still may be sued by insurance companies, HMOs and union health plans individually.
Many early lawsuits were decided in favor of Merck, judging that the plaintiff did not receive harm due to Vioxx but rather other drugs or conditions to which Vioxx did not contribute.
One such case was brought by the family of a 52-year-old woman, who lost its case to the drug giant when an Illinois jury decided that Vioxx was not to blame for her fatal heart attack. In another case, a New Orleans man was judged to have had untreated problems for decades before using Vioxx that were responsible for his heart attack, rather than his usage of Vioxx.
All in all, Merck has won 9 of 14 lawsuits. However, they still have a long way to go.
More than 27,000 lawsuits were filed against the New Jersey-based company after it pulled Vioxx, its flagship drug and the most successful prescription drug for arthritis of all time, in September 2004.
Over the five years from the time when Vioxx was introduced on the market in 1999, the drug had been prescribed to over 80 million patients worldwide. Many of the plaintiffs were patients who experienced heart attacks or strokes induced by the drug, the ingestion of which studies showed made them twice as likely to experience the infarction or hemorrhage.
Rather than provide a group settlement to the massive number of Vioxx users, as many drug companies in the past have done, Merck set aside nearly a billion dollars in legal defense in order to fight each case individually. Of the original number of lawsuits, 1,170 have been thrown out permanently. Of those that have gone to trial, Merck has won nine and lost five. And, though they have won several suits, the process has been long and drawn out, and there is no end in sight.
Regardless of the timing, the jury awards to the victims who have won against Merck are large enough that despite the recent victory, the drug company will still pay dearly for their defective product.
An Atlantic City man was awarded $47.5 million for a heart attack, including $27.5 million in punitive damages.
In New Jersey, a couple was awarded $15 million for a heart attack caused by Vioxx despite numerous court appeals from Merck. The judgment made last year was recently upheld by a New Jersey jury.
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