Drug Litigation Newsroom

Slew Of Lawsuits Will Target Vioxx Maker

In July of 2002 Malcolm Wheeler, an attorney for Pfizer, called Mr. Troy, then FDA's chief counsel, and requested that FDA get involved in a private state lawsuit against Pfizer that was ongoing in California. Mr. Troy obliged and in September, less than two months later, FDA, through the Department of Justice, filed a court brief in support of Pfizer.  That same July Mr. Troy also had a meeting with Michele Corash from Morrison and of Lawsuits Will Target Vioxx Maker Throngs of lawyers who represent people allegedly hurt or killed by the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx will gather in California and Las Vegas next week to discuss preparing class-action lawsuits against the drug's maker, Merck & Co., The New York Times reported Friday. "This is a case that needs to be managed by the premier lawyers in the country," a Louisiana attorney involved in prior litigation against tobacco companies told the newspaper. One lawyer familiar with the meetings told the Times that he expected about 500 plaintiff attorneys to attend. Merck withdrew the drug on Sept. 30, citing new data that showed users' increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Even before that announcement, one-time users had already filed hundreds of suits against the company, the newspaper said. Merck, which has said it withdrew the drug once it had conclusive evidence of its dangers, would not disclose a legal defense strategy, the Times said. On Thursday, the British medical journal The Lancet published a research analysis concluding that the company and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should have had enough clinical evidence of the drug's dangers to have withdrawn it years earlier, the newspaper said.