UPDATE: Global Settlement Offer Made By Merck To End Vioxx Litigation According To November 9, 2007 News Reports
Merck Agrees to Settle Vioxx Suits for $4.85 Billion (NY Times) Merck Is Expected to Announce Vioxx Settlement of $4.85 Billion (Wall Street Journal) Merck May Pay $5 Billion to Settle Vioxx Cases, Lawyers Say (Bloomberg)
Two Vioxx Trials Now In Progress; Another 24,000 Cases Wait For Their Day In Court
On November 8, 2006 Merck's Chief Executive Richard Clark said during a speech at Reuters Health Summit in New York City that there may be some Vioxx lawsuit settlements in the future, but not to expect anything but more Vioxx trials for the next several years.
Merck stop selling its blockbuster arthritis drug Vioxx in September 2004 after a study showed that Vioxx use could double the risk of having a heart attack or a stroke. During the two years that followed this Vioxx recall, the number of personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits filed against Merck has gone into the tens of thousands. Merck, meanwhile, has remained more or less steadfast in its position that it will take these each of these Vioxx cases to court rather than trying for an early global settlement.
According to a November 8, 2006 Reuters article about the Vioxx litigation:
At last count, Merck was facing nearly 24,000 Vioxx lawsuits and the company has steadfastly insisted that it will fight each case in court individually rather than consider a large-scale settlement.
"We know our strategy is right. It's case by case, day by day, jury by jury," Clark said.
"We have won more cases than we've lost, so there's no reason to settle this," he added.
Clark pointed to some 3,000 cases that have been dropped so far in justifying the decision to ignore calls for a major settlement agreement that could put the Vioxx debacle behind the company.
"If we would have settled earlier, those 3,000 cases, which probably weren't worthy of being in the case load, we would have had to settle those," Clark said.
"It will take us years to understand that the cases that they have are quality cases; that indeed, first of all, that the patient actually took Vioxx. We have many cases where that didn't happen.
"This case by case (strategy) is going to take us years until we are satisfied that the case load is the proper case load. We're not there yet," Clark said.
Merck recently took a charge of $598 million for Vioxx legal expenses on top of the $685 million it had previously set aside for litigation reserves. But the drugmaker has yet to hand over any money in damages, even to plaintiffs who have won Vioxx trials.
At the time of these November 2006 remarks by Merck's Chief Executive, there were two ongoing Vioxx trials: Mason v. Merck, No. 06-0810, E.D. La., in New Orleans, part of the federal court Vioxx MDL; and, Arrigale v. Merck, No. 05CC03136, as well as Appell v. Merck, No. BC328858, Calif. Super., Los Angeles Co., two individual Vioxx cases combined for trial and part of the California state court coordinated Vioxx litigation in Los Angeles. The Arrigale case originally had been set for a trial in June 2006.
According to a report that Merck filed recently with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as of October 9, 2006 the drug company had been named in about 23,800 Vioxx lawsuits which involved approximately 41,750 individuals. In addition, this October 2006 SEC filing by Merck provided this additional detail:
- approximately 7,450 Vioxx lawsuits are part of the federal court MDL in New Orleans;
- another 13,850 Vioxx lawsuits are part of the New Jersey state court coordinated Vioxx litigation, in Atlantic County, NJ; and,
- an estimated 15,000 individuals claiming Vioxx-related injuries involving heart attacks or ischemic strokes have entered into so-called "tolling agreements", essentially a deal made by Merck with certain potential claimants by which the statute of limitations filing deadline has been suspended for their Vioxx case.
Of course, no one really believes Merck when they defiantly state that each and every Vioxx case will be resolved only by a trial. It does seem, however, that there will be many more Vioxx trials before the day comes when Merck begins to implement any plan whereby some categories of Vioxx cases will be settled by the drug company.
(Posted by: Tom Lamb)