Texas Jury Is Seated in First Vioxx Lawsuit to Go to Trial
A jury of seven men and five women was seated Wednesday to decide the outcome of the nation’s first Vioxx-related lawsuit to go to trial.
The panel will begin hearing opening statements today in the courthouse in Angleton, about 40 miles south of Houston. The trial is expected to last five weeks.
The Angleton case stems from the death in 2001 of Robert Ernst, a 59-year-old personal trainer and marathon runner.
His widow, Carol Ernst, alleges that her husband took Vioxx for about eight months and the drug caused his death from an arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat.
It is the first of more than 3,800 state and federal lawsuits pending against New Jersey-based Merck & Co. over the popular painkiller, which the company withdrew in September after research showed that it could double the risk of heart attack or stroke.
Merck said it responsibly researched Vioxx’s safety in numerous clinical trials before the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug. The company also said it monitored Vioxx after the drug went on the market in 1999.
Plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier plans to argue that Merck knew Vioxx could be dangerous years before the company pulled the lucrative drug from the market but downplayed those concerns in favor of profits.
Merck claims that no studies link Vioxx to arrhythmia and therefore Vioxx couldn’t have caused Robert Ernst’s death.
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