NEW JERSEY VIOXX VERDICT: MERCK FAILED TO WARN . . . In the verdict in a two-plaintiff trial that the press is calling a "split decision," the jury found in both cases that Merck improperly failed to warn about risks. Here is how the Associated Press summed up the verdict:

A jury found Merck & Co. liable on Wednesday for one of two former Vioxx users' heart attacks in a split verdict that awarded $4.5 million in damages to one of the plaintiffs.

The state jury found the company failed to adequately warn both men about the risk factors linking the now-withdrawn painkiller to heart attacks and strokes, but said the drug was only a factor in one of the men's illnesses.

The jury's work still isn't done: it will return today to consider punitive damages.

You can find other comments about the trial at Day on Torts, Point of Law, A Georgia Lawyer, and The Settlement Channel. I often wonder why the Vioxx litigation is being followed so much more closely than other mass torts, including the diet-drug litigation, which began in 1997 and is still continuing. Is it because so many people took Vioxx? Is it because so many people own Merck stock?

My collected Vioxx posts are here.

Comments

[Jeff]

Merck should declare bankruptcy and cease operations, or stop selling medications in the US altogether.

[Matt]

I note that Ted Frank has now taken to attacking the judge's credibility on Point of Law. Looks like no attack, regardless of factual basis or the lack thereof, will go unused from here on out.

[Ted]

I noted the factual basis on Point of Law. Matt's lack of refutation is telling.

Jami Rubin, a Morgan Stanley analyst who has no axe to grind, also noted the bias Higbee showed at trial. "In a research note, she predicted the punitive award -- and any state criminal probe -- would be overturned on appeal because the case 'makes a mockery of the whole jury system.'"

[Matt]

Ted, between keeping track of the excesses of the American legal system by reading the cases you post from around the world at Overlawyered, how am I supposed to keep up with everything you're also doing on Point of Law? And now I have to also keep track of stock analysts' interpretation of cases? I hope your clients pay you well for your PR work, because you clearly do a lot of it.

Perhaps if you could just pare it down to one site where we can all be outraged.

[Matt]

Oops, my mistake, I was replying to the wrong comment. See what all this outrage has done to me, Ted? I'm as confused as a hapless judge who made the grave mistake of issuing a ruling against a corporate defendant.

You have no factual basis for your claim, or implication, that she is biased against Merck because she at one time represented med mal plaintiffs. Given that you would disagree with someone who might suggest you are biased given your past representation of pharmaceuticals (including, I believe, Merck itself), this concept should not be difficult to grasp.