Punish Drug Firm, Vioxx Jurors Urged
Attorneys for a widower who claims the painkiller Vioxx contributed to his wife’s death in 2003 urged jurors today to punish the maker of the once-blockbuster drug for what the lawyers said was failure to give adequate warnings about potentially deadly side-effects.
In closing arguments, Mikal Watts argued that Merck & Co. ignored or stifled credible warnings that Vioxx could cause cardiovascular problems, including warnings that came well before Patty Schwaller collapsed and died of a heart attack after taking Vioxx for about 20 months.
Merck pulled the drug off the market in 2004 after its research showed it increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Schwaller — who died suddenly Aug. 8, 2003 after returning home with groceries — “shall not have died in vain,” Watts told the Madison County jury in the Midwest’s first trial involving Vioxx.
Citing the company’s own internal e-mails, Watts said Merck failed to adequately study Vioxx’s possible side-effects on people at risk of heart disease and publicly downplayed worries by outside researchers that Vioxx could put users at greater risk of heart attacks or strokes.
“These people kept cutting the data until it told them what they wanted it to say,” Watts said of top Merck executives.
Vioxx, once Merck’s No. 2 drug, generated sales exceeding $11 billion from May 1999 through September 2004, according to Merck regulatory filings and other information.
Schwaller’s family has claimed that the 5-foot-2 Granite City woman — whose weight fluctuated between 250 and 300 pounds for at least two decades — had no heart attacks, strokes or symptoms of congestive heart disease before her fatal collapse on Aug. 8, 2003.
Merck, Watts insisted, pushed consumers like Schwaller “over the cliff” by putting profits over patient safety.
Attorneys for Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., were expected to summarize their cases later Monday before jurors began deliberating.
They already have argued that the company followed federal regulations and acted swiftly to warn doctors that Vioxx carried possibly dangerous side-effects. They also have said that Schwaller’s obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and sedentary lifestyle might have posed risks that better explain her collapse and sudden death.
On Monday, Watts rejected that as a diversion.
“The fact she was near the cliff in the first place does not get them off the hook, folks,” he told jurors. “They’re trying to turn what is white into black.”
The trial has been closely watched in Madison County, which has gained national notoriety as a place where lawyers from across the country file cases involving everything from asbestos exposure to medical malpractice, hoping for big payouts.
Merck has been deluged with more than 27,000 personal injury lawsuits and another 265 potential class-action lawsuits alleging harm from Vioxx. The company has reserved $1.64 billion in its Vioxx legal defense fund, saying it plans to fight each lawsuit.
On March 12, jurors in Atlantic City, N.J., found that Vioxx contributed to Idaho postal worker Frederick “Mike” Humeston’s 2001 heart attack, reversing the verdict in the man’s first trial and hitting Merck with a total of $47.5 million in damages.
If the verdict and damage amounts are upheld, it could be the biggest hit to Merck so far.
In the only Vioxx case with a larger verdict — $51 million awarded last August to Gerald Barnett of Myrtle Beach, S.C. — U.S. District Judge Eldon E. Fallon in New Orleans ordered a new trial on the amount of damages, calling the total “grossly excessive.”
A New Jersey Supreme Court panel also is considering whether to allow health insurers and union health plans to sue Merck jointly to recover money they paid for Vioxx prescriptions — a lawsuit potentially worth more than $15 billion. A New Jersey state judge granted that lawsuit class-action status in mid-2005, and a state appellate court ruled last year that the nationwide suit could go forward. Merck is appealing.