Ankylose This! Living with Ankylosing Spondylitis

Monday, March 12, 2007

Jury awards $47.5 million in Vioxx lawsuit

In November 2005 I referred to a Vioxx lawsuit that Merck won in New Jersey. A superior court judge granted the plaintiffs -- Frederick "Mike" Humeston and his wife Mary, of Idaho -- a new trial based on new evidence about the risks of short-term Vioxx use, and today the jury in the second trial returned a very different outcome from the first trial: they awarded the Humestons a total of $47.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. AP story: Business Week; Houston Chronicle; Wired. Merck is facing 28,000 lawsuits over Vioxx (half of them in New Jersey), and they're fighting them one by one; they say they'll appeal.

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