Drug Lawsuit news

Merck Pays $4.85 Billion for Vioxx Settlement

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Merck & Co has agreed to pay $4.85 billion to settle claims that its painkiller Vioxx caused heart attacks and strokes in thousands of users, the drugmaker said on Friday.                                                 

The agreement covers lawsuits filed against the company in U.S. courts, resolving a major legal battle that has dogged the drugmaker since it pulled Vioxx off the market three years ago.

Merck recalled the popular painkiller, which had $2.5 billion in annual sales, in September 2004 after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke in patients taking it for more than 18 months.

In the settlement, reached with representatives of plaintiffs in federal and state courts, Merck did not admit Vioxx caused patient injury and did not admit fault.

Judge Rejects Merck Motion for Mistrial

By JOHN CURRAN     Associated Press Writer

  © 2006 The Associated Press

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Merck & Co. unsuccessfully appealed to a judge Friday to declare a mistrial in the case of two men who blame their heart attacks on Vioxx. The company had claimed a plaintiff's attorney tried to influence the jury by disclosing that his client had written letters to jurors thanking them for their service.
The motion for a mistrial stemmed from statements made by lawyer Mark Lanier to The Associated Press on Thursday that plaintiff Thomas Cona, 59, had written the letters, to be given to members of the eight-person panel after the case ends. The letters were given to state Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee, who has not decided whether to give them to the jurors, according to Theresa Ungaro, a spokeswoman for Higbee.
Late Friday afternoon, Higbee denied the motion _ and a companion motion asking her to throw out the case before it reaches the jury. Closing arguments are set for Monday in the four-week case.

Jona and John McDarby, 77, are suing Merck over the now-withdrawn arthritis drug, which they say caused them to suffer heart attacks. Merck says the men had pre-existing conditions that were more likely causes and that Vioxx can't be blamed.    

So far, the Whitehouse Station-based drug manufacturer has won two cases and lost one in the legal fight over Vioxx, which was pulled off the market in 2004 after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes after 18 months' use.

In its motion Friday, Merck attorney Hope Freiwald called the letters "the latest blatant attempt of plaintiffs' counsel ... to improperly influence the jury pool through extrajudicial comments."    

"...by trumpeting his client's preparation of such letters to the media, he has essentially `delivered' them in advance. Mr. Lanier's gratuitous comments to the media are a transparent attempt to improperly influence the jury by suggesting his client is personally thankful for their efforts while Merck is not. Moreover, his further compliments to the jury are a transparent _ and improper _ attempt to curry favor," Merck's motion said.

Telling jurors to disregard the statements would not fix the problem, and a mistrial was warranted, according to Merck's motion, which said the company's lawyer hadn't been told about the letters.

Lanier called the motion hypocritical, saying Merck is currently airing TV commercials about the company in the Atlantic City market that could be construed as trying to sway jurors.   

"Their motion is a diversion," Lanier said. "I also think it's the pinnacle of hypocrisy."   

He said he made the comments in response to a question from a reporter who called him. "I did not seed it. They're paying money to get their efforts to persuade jurors on the TV. There's a huge difference."   

Robert Gordon, a lawyer for McDarby, called the mistrial motion and the motion for summary judgment signs that Merck is nervous about its case.   

"That's the weakest motion for a mistrial I have ever heard," said Gordon. "The jury has been instructed to not read anything about Vioxx. If they think some jury's going to decide (the case), after a four-week case involving 22 witnesses and hundreds of pages of documents, because they think one of the plaintiffs has written a thank you note, that's absurd."   

In its motion for summary judgment, Merck said no reasonable jury could return a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs based on the evidence heard in the trial. It is the second summary judgment motion filed by Merck.

Trasylol Warning

February 8, 2006 - Today the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Public Health Advisory to warn doctors and patients about the serious risks of Trasylol side effects.

Lawyers gather to plan lawsuits over Vioxx

About 250 lawyers assembled in Philadelphia on the 20th to discuss their strategies in filing lawsuits against Merck & Co. over Vioxx.

Merck pulled the arthritis drug off the market last year after it was found to double patients' risk of heart attack and strokes. About 700 lawsuits already have been filed, many of then Vioxx class action lawsuits.

Drug Lawsuit - News on Prozac

LONDON Dec 31, 2004 — A British medical journal said Friday it had given U.S. regulators confidential drug company documents suggesting a link between the popular anti-depressant Prozac and a heightened risk of suicide attempts and violence.

The British Medical Journal reported in its Jan. 1 issue that documents it received from an anonymous source indicated that Prozac's manufacturer, Eli Lilly & Co., was aware in the 1980s that the drug could have potentially troubling side-effects.

The company's stock closed down 75 cents a share to $56.75 Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.

The journal said the documents, reportedly missing for a decade, had formed part of a 1994 lawsuit against Eli Lilly on behalf of victims of a workplace shooting in Louisville, Kentucky. Joseph Wesbecker, the gunman who killed eight people and himself in 1989, had been prescribed Prozac a month before the shootings.

Eli Lilly won the case, but later disclosed it had settled with the plaintiffs during the trial.

The journal said one of the records, dated November 1988, reported that fluoxetine, the generic name for Prozac, had caused "behavioral disturbances" in clinical trials.

The journal said it had turned the documents over to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had agreed to review them.

The journal said the office of U.S. Congressman Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from New York, also was examining the documents to determine whether Eli Lilly had withheld data from the public and the FDA.

"This is an alarming study that should have been shared with the public and the FDA from the get-go, not 16 years later," Hinchey was quoted as saying.

"To our knowledge, there has never been any allegation of missing documents from the Wesbecker trial or any other trial involving Lilly," the company said Friday in a statement. Lilly said it had always been its objective to disclose data about the safety and efficacy of Prozac.

"Lilly has made several requests to the BMJ to obtain copies of the supposed 'missing' documents; we still await these documents," the statement said. "We are surprised and concerned that a leading medical journal would not find it important to share these documents with us so that we could respond to the public in a meaningful way."

The company said it has consistently provided regulatory agencies with results from both clinical trials and safety monitoring after the drug was approved.

"Based on this, Lilly believes that there is no new scientific information to review on this topic," the statement said.

In an earlier statement to the journal, Eli Lilly said Prozac "has helped to significantly improve millions of lives."

"It is one of the most studied drugs in the history of medicine, and has been prescribed for more than 50 million people worldwide. The safety and efficacy of Prozac is well studied, well documented and well established."

In October, FDA ordered that all antidepressants carry warnings that they "increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior" in children.

Top Merck exec to testify re Vioxx

TRENTON, N.J. - The top executive at pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., Raymond Gilmartin, might testify by March in some of the dozens of Vioxx lawsuits filed in New Jersey over Merck's withdrawal of its arthritis drug Vioxx. A state superior court judge issued an order requiring Gilmartin to answer questions from plaintiffs' attorneys about his knowledge of risks associated with Vioxx before Merck pulled it from the market

Vioxx Lawsuit Filed Against Merck in Arizona

Source: PR Newswire Published: December 13, 2004

A Phoenix resident filed a lawsuit against Merck & Company, alleging that the company purposely withheld information about the health risks associated with Vioxx.

The lawsuit, filed by Edward W. Wright in Arizona Superior Court, is the first statewide class action, according to his attorneys. Once certified by the court, the suit will represent any Arizona resident who purchased Vioxx over the past four years.

"Consumers all across Arizona purchased Vioxx, paying more than $2 a pill, about one hundred times the cost of regular aspirin," Rob Carey, an attorney with the Hagens Berman law firm. "We believe that in addition to being held responsible for the enormous health implications, the makers of Vioxx owe consumers a financial obligation to return the huge profits they made in selling such a horribly flawed drug."

The lawsuit alleges that Merck violated Arizona's consumer fraud act and unjustly profited from its conduct.

According to the complaint, internal e-mails show Merck executives knew that Vioxx had safety risks, noting in one correspondence that undisclosed risks were "clearly there." In spite of these concerns, Merck launched a massive direct-to-consumer campaign, spending more than $161 million in 2000 alone. That campaign propelled sales to $2 billion per year, the suit contends.

Merck pulled Vioxx from all worldwide markets on September 30, 2004, after a study confirmed that it increases a patients' risk of heart attack and stroke after 18-months of use.

Top Merck exec to testify re Vioxx

TRENTON, N.J. - The top executive at pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., Raymond Gilmartin, might testify by March in some of the dozens of Vioxx lawsuits filed in New Jersey over Merck's withdrawal of its arthritis drug Vioxx. A state superior court judge issued an order requiring Gilmartin to answer questions from plaintiffs' attorneys about his knowledge of risks associated with Vioxx before Merck pulled it from the market

Risk Management & FDA

In July 1998, Public Citizen petitioned the FDA to ban Rezulin, which, although lowering blood sugar by a different mechanism than earlier diabetes drugs, had no evidence of improved mortality or morbidity. By July 1998, there were 560 reported cases of liver damage, including 26 deaths.

After failed efforts at "risk management," Rezulin was withdrawn from the market in January 2000, by which time there were hundreds of additional cases of liver damage and 63 deaths. Other belatedly banned drugs include the painkiller Duract, the blood-pressure drug Posicor and the cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol.

Decisions to approve or remove drugs must be based on adequate evidence of both benefits and risks. For Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra - the three COX-2 inhibitor pain/arthritis drugs - at approval there was no evidence that they were more effective than older drugs.

Only Vioxx, now withdrawn because of a significant increase in heart attacks, proved to be less dangerous to the gastrointestinal tract than older drugs. Celebrex and Bextra did not. Although at approval there was no evidence of increased cardiac risk from Vioxx or Celebrex, less than a year later a 2001 study on Vioxx found it was five times more likely than naproxen (Aleve) to cause heart attacks, and a Celebrex study prompted FDA concerns about cardiac risks for that drug.

Removing Celebrex from the market will be a major step forward for public health. For naproxen, the evidence of its harm is preliminary at best, and it is unlikely to pose cardiac risks as high as those documented for Vioxx or Celebrex. There is no basis for removing it from the market.

Unique risks without unique benefits should always be the algorithm for removing drugs.

Sidney Wolfe is the director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group and co-author of the new edition of Worst Pills, Best Pills. Public Citizen's W eb site, www.worstpills.org, lists what it says are safer alternatives to 181 drugs.

Little Rock Law Firm Sues Pfizer Over Celebrex, Bextra

This drug lawsuit is on behalf of the stockholders:

12/22/04 11:58:41 AM
By Arkansas Business staff, Arkansasbusiness.com Daily Report

Emerson Poynter LLP, a law firm with offices in Little Rock, Houston and Seattle, said Tuesday that it filed a lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., saying the company misrepresented facts about the safety of two drugs, Celebrex and Bextra.

Pfizer removed all marketing for Celebrex on Monday after questions were raised about the pain medication’s safety. Emerson Poynter’s lawsuit is the third Pfizer faces after disclosing Friday that Celebrex and Bextra might increase the chances of heart problems in users.

Last week, Pfizer released a study that Celebrex users had double the chance of experiencing heart problems than patients taking placebo.

Emerson Poynter filed the lawsuit on behalf of shareholders who purchased Pfizer stock between Nov. 1, 2000, and Dec. 16, 2004.

Emerson Poynter, whose Little Rock offices are at 2228 Cottondale Ave., was founded by partners John G. Emerson and Scott E. Poynter, both Arkansas natives. The firm specializes in securities purchaser class action lawsuits