Settling Vioxx claims may cost Merck $5 billion

Merck & Co., after setting aside nothing to resolve liability over its Vioxx painkiller, may pay about $5 billion to settle claims that it hid the health risks of its withdrawn drug, three lawyers with direct knowledge of the accord said.

Merck, the third-largest U.S. drug maker, pulled Vioxx off the market in 2004 after a study showed it raised the risk of heart attacks in some patients. The company is facing more than 26,500 lawsuits filed by former users who claim the drug caused strokes and heart attacks.

Most suits over the drug have been filed in state courts in California and New Jersey or are being managed by a federal judge in New Orleans. Merck faced about 30,000 claims in those courts just before a key deadline last year.

Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., has had mixed results from its strategy of fighting cases one by one rather than settle, and had set aside $1.8 billion for the litigation.

Among its losses were some major awards, including a $51-million verdict that a Newport Beach lawyer won in Louisiana for a retired FBI agent who had a heart attack at age 58 after taking the drug for 2 1/2 years.

But Merck also has won a number of trials, including a Los Angeles case in which jurors deliberated less than a day before clearing the company.

Plaintiffs Rudolph Arrigale, a retired truck and ambulance driver, and Laurence Appell, a former Weight Watchers International Inc. executive, said they wouldn’t have taken Vioxx if they had known about the health risks.

Merck lawyers told jurors the men’s heart attacks were the result of their prior medical conditions and risk factors.