$47.5 million awarded to plaintiff in Vioxx retrial

Merck & Co.’s Vioxx painkiller helped cause an Idaho mail carrier’s heart attack, a New Jersey jury found, ordering the drug maker to pay him and his wife $47.5 million in a retrial of a case the man originally lost.

Jurors in Atlantic City imposed actual damages of $20 million and punitive damages of $27.5 million after ruling that Vioxx was partly to blame for Frederick Humeston’s 2001 heart attack. The same jury found March 2 that Merck failed to properly warn Humeston, 61, that the drug posed increased risk for some users.

The loss is Merck’s fifth in a Vioxx trial. The Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based company, facing 27,000 lawsuits tied to the drug, has won nine cases since 2005.