Bloomberg Columnists : Ann Woolner : Come One, Come All. File Your Vioxx Lawsuit

Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- I'm thinking of calling a lawyer to see if I can file a Vioxx lawsuit. Mark Lanier in Houston is probably busy on other calls, having won a $253 million Vioxx verdict against Merck & Co. this month. No matter. The Internet is full of lawyers offering free consultations, online case evaluations and toll-free telephone numbers.If Lanier can win that much money for a widow whose husband might not have died from Vioxx, if he can do it with 11 Republicans on the jury in a politically conservative county, then surely anybody can win a case against Merck. Scrounging through my medicine cabinet, I find no bottles of Vioxx. OK, so I never took the stuff and suffer no ailment resembling a Vioxx side effect.
Still, the news out of Texas gives me hope. The first Vioxx trial of many to come looks like yet another case of a runaway jury softened up by a sad story, manipulated by a clever trial lawyer and unable to understand scientific evidence. Merck's lawyers didn't make comprehension easy. ``Whenever Merck was up there, it was like `Wah, wah, wah,''' juror John Ostrom told reporters after the verdict. ``We didn't know what the heck they were talking about.''
Doctors' Questions
What they did understand were documents and e-mails that showed Merck suspected as far back as 1997 that Vioxx might be more dangerous than the company would claim. They heard evidence Merck told its sales force to evade doctors' questions about health risks and tried to intimidate scientists who openly questioned Vioxx's safety. Jurors, outraged over Merck's conduct, may well have filled in evidence gaps around the essential issue they had to answer: did Vioxx help kill Robert Ernst?
The autopsy showed Ernst died of arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat. That's never been one of Vioxx's known side effects. Case closed, right? Merck had hoped so. But Lanier tracked down in the United Arab Emirates the pathologist who had performed the autopsy and flew her to Texas for a video deposition mid-trial.