A New Jersey jury ruled today that Merck & Co. was not liable for the heart attack suffered by a man who had used Vioxx, the pain reliever that the company had to pull from the market. The verdict is the first win for Merck, which has vowed to defend the more than 6,400 liability lawsuits involving Vioxx. A Texas jury in August found the company liable and punished it with a $253-million judgment.
"I promise you we will keep fighting," said Christopher Seeger, who represented the plaintiff, an Idaho postal worker who said he had a heart attack two months after he took Vioxx to relieve the pain in his knee that was injured in the Vietnam War.
"The score is 1-1. If this were the World Series, we each won one game. We're going to keep coming," Seeger said in an interview televised from outside the courthouse in Atlantic City, N.J.
"I feel pretty good," Diane Sullivan, lead counsel for the company, said at her televised news conference. "I'm proud of the folks at Merck."
Details here from the Los Angeles Times.