Vioxx Jury Making Progress, to continue on Monday
By Natasha | Mon, 12/12/2005 - 06:32
A federal jury deciding whether Merck & Co.’s Vioxx painkiller caused a Florida man’s fatal heart attack said it will return next week to keep deliberating in the case.
So far, the jurors have deliberated for more than 18 hours over three days. They told U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon earlier Saturday that they could not reach a unanimous verdict, but he urged them to continue.
Judge Eldon Fallon called the jury into the courtroom and instructed them to keep deliberating for a "reasonable" amount of time and try to reach a verdict. After the jury left the courtroom, the judge told the lawyers that he wouldn’t ask the jury to deliberate for an "undue" amount of time. He asked the lawyers to remain in court in case the jury returned.
"It is your duty to agree on a verdict if you can do so without surrendering your own conscientious opinion," Fallon told them.
Lawyers for both sides sat at the same spots they’ve occupied over the past two weeks, looking tired and sometimes pensive. Occasionally, the plaintiff’s lawyers lounged in the jury box. Plaintiff Evelyn Irvin Plunkett and her family also waited.
This case was expected to be an easy win for Merck. Irvin had used the drug for less than a month. The study that led Merck to withdraw Vioxx from the market last year showed that risk of heart attack rises after 18 months. Merck says there’s no evidence of short-term risk.
[inline:1]Merck faces an estimated 7,000 lawsuits by former Vioxx users or their families.
Thursday, reports surfaced that the New England Journal of Medicine alleged Merck withheld key data from a 2000 Vioxx study. That led Plunkett’s attorneys to ask for a mistrial, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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