"New" Liability Document Will be Important In NJ Vioxx Case Scheduled for September 2005

On July 26, 2005 The Wall Street Journal reported that plaintiff attorneys in a New Jersey Vioxx lawsuit are expected to make a lot of use of a certain internal Merck document at their upcoming trial in September because this document suggests that some Vioxx users started having heart problems as early as a few weeks after beginning to take Vioxx.

This is apparently a "new" liability document insofar that it was just provided to a different set of plaintiff attorneys last week in the current Texas Vioxx court case, Ernst v. Merck (Brazoria County, Judge Hardin presiding).  This particular internal Merck document could be used to effectively undermine one of Merck’s primary defenses in the Vioxx litigation, namely that Vioxx users were not at an increased risk for developing a heart attack or a stroke until after using Vioxx daily for 18 months or more.

This seemingly critical Merck document contains preliminary, unpublished results of a clinical trial called "Victor". Researchers associated with Oxford University, in the U.K., conducted the Victor study for Merck.  As of the time of the July article in The Wall Street Journal, those researchers had only given Merck some preliminary data pertaining to their drug-safety study. A Merck spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal that "Merck believes that Oxford is working diligently to get us the data as it becomes available."  From Oxford, the researchers said in a statement that the study data is being "cleaned" and will be submitted to Merck on July 29, 2005, "as previously agreed with Merck."  The Oxford researchers say that the final results likely would not be published until sometime in 2008.

Merck ended the Victor study prematurely in September 2004, when the drug company voluntarily took Vioxx off the market worldwide. Merck has taken the position that any interpretation of the magnitude and importance of the Victor trial results will be made more difficult by the fact that this drug-safety study was ended early.

The reason that this new liability document is important to the attorneys who will be prosecuting the Vioxx case against Merck in New Jersey?  The claimant in that NJ Vioxx lawsuit only took Vioxx pills for two months before suffering his heart attack back in 2001.

(Posted by: Tom Lamb)