Judge Denies Request for Delay in Vioxx Trial

A judge on Tuesday declined to postpone the first wrongful-death trial related to the painkiller Vioxx but said he would check questionnaires filled out by potential jurors for evidence that they were biased by pretrial publicity.

“For now, we’re going to keep going,” state District Judge Ben Hardin told lawyers for Merck & Co., the manufacturer of Vioxx.

Merck asked for a two-month delay to allow for a “cooling-off” period for any bias that could taint a jury pool arising from news coverage of a separate lawsuit Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott filed last week against the drug maker.

Merck withdrew the drug in September when research showed that patients who took it for 18 months or longer more than doubled their risk for heart attack and stroke.

Since then, thousands of Vioxx lawsuits have been filed nationwide.

In Abbott’s $250-million lawsuit, he alleges that Merck defrauded Texans by representing Vioxx as safe when pushing for it to be included on the state’s list of medicines approved for Medicaid.

The company’s motion for a delay says Abbott’s suit “effectively eliminated any possibility Merck can receive a fair trial beginning July 11.”

In the filing, Merck said a law firm that helped the attorney general’s office on the lawsuit represented at least six plaintiffs suing the company.

“The timing of the [state] lawsuit is hardly a coincidence,” according to Merck’s motion.