Vioxx News

Merck & Co. won an extension to appeal the certification of an Ontario group lawsuit, claiming the painkiller Vioxx caused heart attacks and strokes, because certification of a similar suit was overturned in Saskatchewan.

Merck, which has settled most of its Vioxx lawsuits in the U.S., has until May 21 to file notice of appeal at the Court of Appeal for Ontario, Judge Paul Rouleau said today. The appeal period had expired four months ago, he said.

In what may be among the longest-running and widest-ranging cases of academic fraud, one of the most prolific researchers in anesthesiology has admitted that he fabricated much of the data underlying his research, said a spokeswoman for the hospital where he works.

The researcher, Dr. Scott S. Reuben, an anesthesiologist in Springfield, Mass., who practiced at Baystate Medical Center, never conducted the clinical trials that he wrote about in 21 journal articles dating from at least 1996, said Jane Albert, a spokeswoman for Baystate Health.

Merck & Co. Inc. said Friday it will pay $4.85 billion US to settle thousands of lawsuits in the United States over its anti-inflammatory painkiller medication Vioxx.
The New Jersey-based company faces about 26,600 lawsuits covering 47,000 plaintiffs, plus about 265 potential class action cases. The suits were launched by people who claimed that using Vioxx contributed to heart disease or stroke.

A Canadian lawyer handling 300 Vioxx cases from across the country said he expects that Merck will quickly seek to settle all of its cases in Canada.

"We are prepared to fight these cases patient by patient, case by case" if a settlement is not forthcoming, Greg Monforton said.

Greg Monforton (former President of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association and senior partner of Greg Monforton & Partners) today reacted to the U.S. $4.85 billion Vioxx settlement reached with Merck & Co.

Monforton’s office has fielded close to 4,000 inquiries from across Canada from people with concerns that they suffered injury by ingesting Vioxx.  Ultimately, Monforton agreed to take on over 300 individual cases involving Canadians from all provinces.  Monforton said that all of his firm’s Vioxx clients have suffered either heart attack or stroke, resulting in serious injuries and in many cases, death. 

Merck Failed to Warn Doctors About Vioxx, New Orleans Jury Finds in 2nd Federal Case

Merck & Co. lost the second federal trial over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx on Thursday and must pay $51 million to a retired FBI agent who had a heart attack after taking the drug for more than two years, a jury decided.

The jury found that Merck & Co. "knowingly misrepresented or failed to disclose" information about the drug to retired FBI agent Gerald Barnett's doctors. It said Barnett should get $50 million in compensatory damages.

Jurors in the seventh trial over withdrawn painkiller Vioxx began deliberating Wednesday morning over the plaintiff's claim that the former Merck & Co. drug caused her 2004 heart attack.

Shortly before the FDA approved Vioxx in 1999, drug maker Merck launched a study it hoped would prove that Vioxx was superior to older painkillers, because it caused fewer gastrointestinal problems. Instead, the study would eventually show Vioxx could be deadly, causing heart attacks and strokes.

In 2004, Merck pulled its painkiller Vioxx from the market. The drug was causing heart problems, strokes and deaths among patients in a large study that was under way at the time. Merck stopped the study early when those results became clear. Thousands of former Vioxx patients and their families are suing the company.

Now, documents obtained by NPR show that five years earlier, in 1999, during another large Vioxx study, patients had similar heart problems. But that study was not stopped.

Unpublished data from the Merck & Co. study that led the drugmaker to halt sales of Vioxx appear to show the blockbuster painkiller raised the risk of heart attack and stroke within just a few months—not after at least 18 months' use, as Merck has consistently argued.

Globe and Mail
May 3, 2006

The blockbuster drug Vioxx was pulled from the market in the fall of 2004 after research showed that the painkiller doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke and that its use may have contributed to thousands of deaths in North America.

Now, a new Canadian study shows that the risk was even more dramatic because one in four of the heart attacks that occurred were within two weeks of the start of treatment.

A new study suggests the risks of heart attack from taking Vioxx may occur much earlier than previously believed.

The study by the McGill University Hospital Centre reveals that some patients suffered a heart attack within the first two weeks of taking the anti-inflammatory drug. Vioxx was voluntarily withdrawn from the market in September 2004, after another study showed it doubled patients' risk of heart attacks and strokes after 18 months of use.

A state jury found Merck & Co. liable Friday for the death of a 71-year-old man who had a fatal heart attack within a month of taking its since-withdrawn painkiller Vioxx and ordered the company to pay $32 million US. Merck said it would appeal.

The damage award will likely be reduced because of state caps on such awards.

Greg Monforton, President-Elect of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association and the lawyer representing hundreds of Canadian Vioxx claimants in all provinces reacted to today’s $9 million punitive damage award by a New Jersey jury by saying:

This jury concluded that Merck withheld material information from the FDA and that its actions were deliberately meant to harm.  The trail of Merck documents, starting long before Merck even sought FDA approval in 1999, and continuing until withdrawal of Vioxx from the market, show and confirm a pattern of corruption and deception by Merck, resulting in a conscious and deliberate indifference to the safety and health of their customers.

A New Jersey jury found today that Merck had misled the Food and Drug Administration about the safety of its painkiller Vioxx and awarded $9 million in punitive damages to John McDarby, a 77-year-old man who had a heart attack in 2004 after taking Vioxx for four years.

By a 7-to-1 vote, jurors in the Atlantic City Superior Court found that Merck had knowingly withheld information from the FDA and that the company's misconduct was "wanton and willful." The verdict was read in Courtroom 3A before Judge Carol E. Higbee, who is overseeing 4,500 other lawsuits against Merck over Vioxx.

Greg Monforton, President-Elect of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association and the lawyer representing hundreds of Canadian Vioxx claimants in all provinces reacted to Wednesday's successful New Jersey jury verdict by saying, "this verdict in New Jersey is very encouraging news for all Canadians who have suffered heart attacks or strokes while taking Vioxx, as well as for the families of those who lost their lives while doing so."

A state jury found Merck & Co. liable on Wednesday for one of two former Vioxx users' heart attacks and ordered he receive $4.5 million in damages in a closely-watched trial involving two New Jersey men.

The daughter of a man who blames his 2003 heart attack on Merck & Co.'s Vioxx painkiller told a New Jersey jury that her 59-year-old father has lost his vitality and now talks about dying.

The New England Journal of Medicine continues to question a Canadian-led study of Vioxx it published more than five years ago, even though the once-blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug has been pulled from the global market.

Merck & Co., following a significant but unsurprising court victory Friday, faces a more difficult challenge of its Vioxx legal defense strategy next when a trial involving long-term use of its pulled painkiller begins in Atlantic City.

So far, the Vioxx trials that have gone before a jury involved short-term users of the drug, or those who have used Vioxx for less than 18 months, with Merck losing the first one but winning two. Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market in 2004 after a study showed the former blockbuster drug elevated the risk of heart attack and stroke in people taking the drug for at least 18 months.

A top medical journal's criticism of a study cited in Vioxx lawsuits is expected to play a part in the retrial of the first federal Vioxx lawsuit.

The disclosure that some negative data were omitted from the study could make manufacturer Merck & Co. look as if it's hiding something, legal experts say.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. vowed to fight every claim filed by plaintiffs who say they were injured by the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx. Now, with 11 cases slated for trial in the next five months, the viability of the company's scorched-earth strategy is likely to become clear.

More than 9,200 lawsuits involving 18,250 plaintiff groups have been filed against Merck, which pulled Vioxx off the market in September 2004. Merck took the action because of a study that showed the drug was associated with increased risk of heart attacks and strokes after 18 months of use. So far Merck's courtroom record is mixed—one win, one loss and one hung jury, all in cases involving relatively short-term use of the pain drug.

Merck & Co. knew that its painkiller Vioxx increased heart-attack risks but misled doctors and the public because it was more concerned with profits, a plaintiff's attorney said yesterday in closing arguments of the first federal trial involving the drug.

Trial lawyer Greg Monforton called today’s New Jersey jury verdict “a fact specific event.” Monforton said “This was a very plaintiff specific case. The plaintiff’s integrity was viciously attacked and shows what we have thought all along, namely, that each case is going to be unique and tied specifically to its own facts."

With Merck & Co. now 1-and-1 in state lawsuits over its Vioxx painkiller, the nation's No. 5 drug maker may face higher stakes later this month in the first federal trial of charges that it knowingly rushed a potentially lethal drug to market to pocket billions in profits.

Lawyers were set to deliver closing arguments monday in the second trial over Merck & Co Inc.'s painkiller Vioxx, a case seen as key in determining thousands of other pending lawsuits filed by users of the drug.

A Texas jury's decision to award US$253 million to a widow who sued pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. should help Canadians pursue their own lawsuits against the maker of rofecoxib (Vioxx), says a Canadian lawyer.

Windsor, Ont., lawyer Greg Monforton is representing more than 200 Canadians who suffered a stroke or heart attack or who had family members who died while taking rofecoxib.

"We believe that most, if not all, of the documents produced in the Ernst case will be admissible in our Canadian courts because they are relevant to Merck's conduct from the time of the rofecoxib's development, approval and worldwide sales, right through until its withdrawal," says Monforton.

Merck & Co. was told by its own experts about the potential health risks of its painkiller Vioxx before it went on sale in 1999, a plaintiff's lawyer told jurors Friday in a trial over whether the drug caused a Boise, Idaho man's heart attack.

Merck & Co. Inc. on Friday signaled it may considering settling some lawsuits alleging harm from its Vioxx pain drug, as it gears up for its second Vioxx court battle—this time in its own backyard.

CTV.ca
August 20, 2005

A Texas jury has found pharmaceutical giant Merck and Co. liable for the death of a man who took the painkiller Vioxx.

Drug giant Merck & Co. Inc. has suffered a severe setback in the first of thousands of lawsuits in the United States and Canada as a Texas jury awarded more than $253-million (U.S.) to the family of a man who died after taking the company's Vioxx painkiller.

"This loss means that this particular jury believed the plaintiff's story about the company's wrongful conduct, which we believe will carry into the future," said Windsor, Ontario lawyer Greg Monforton, whose firm has some 200 Vioxx clients across Canada.

A jury in Angleton, Texas, awarded the widow of Robert Ernst more than $250 million U.S. in damages related to the medical drug Vioxx on Friday.

Merck & Co., the third-biggest US drugmaker, failed to persuade a judge to postpone the trial of a lawsuit over the death of a Texas man who took the Vioxx painkiller.

Merck & Co. researchers privately sought to reformulate Vioxx in 2000 to reduce its cardiovascular side effects, even as the drug maker was publicly playing down a study that highlighted the pain relief medication's potential heart attack risk, an internal company document shows.

One day in 2000 after lecturing about risks of the pain-reliever Vioxx, Harvard University professor Lee Simon got a call that shocked him.

It was from Louis M. Sherwood, then a senior vice president at Merck & Co. Inc., maker of Vioxx. Based in West Point, Montgomery County, Sherwood challenged Simon's view—later proved correct—that Vioxx could cause more strokes than a rival drug.

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Greg Monforton and Partners has grown to a highly respected products liability law firm with offices conveniently located throughout Windsor and Essex County, together with affiliate relationships with law firms throughout Ontario, Canada and the United States.

We are committed to protecting the rights of individuals injured by dangerous pharmaceuticals. The firm never represents insurance companies or product manufacturers. We only help people.