Judge Wants Vioxx Trials for Long-Term Users Next
The next Vioxx product-liability case to come to trial in New Jersey probably will be a tougher battle for manufacturer Merck & Co., which last week got its first courtroom victory in a case involving short-term use of the now-withdrawn painkiller.
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Carol E. Higbee, who is overseeing about 3,500 Vioxx lawsuits filed in that state -- half the suits filed to date -- has told attorneys that she wants the next group of trials to involve plaintiffs who took the drug for 18 months or more. Plaintiffs’ lawyers said the judge appeared to want to determine how such cases would play out in an attempt to encourage the settlement of some lawsuits.
Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck has admitted that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes after 18 months of use; it pulled the blockbuster arthritis pill from the market in September 2004 after its own research showed that.
Cases with such long-term use will be harder for Merck to defend, although plaintiffs still have the heavy burden of proving that Vioxx caused them harm, plaintiffs’ lawyers say.
In the first Vioxx trial, which ended in August, a Texas jury awarded $253 million to the widow of a man who had used the drug for eight months. The plaintiff in the second trial took Vioxx for about two months.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers said Higbee’s announcement at a conference this week that she wanted to next see “more representative cases” appeared to set the stage to push Merck to begin settling some cases to avoid years of Vioxx trials in her courtroom.
