Two courts scrap legal awards in Vioxx cases

NEWARK, N.J. -- Appeals courts in New Jersey and Texas on Thursday scrapped verdicts against the drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc. stemming from some of the earliest trials involving its once popular painkiller Vioxx.

A Texas court reversed a $26 million verdict against the drug company stemming from the first trial. The court found no evidence that Robert Ernst suffered a fatal heart problem from a blood clot triggered by Vioxx. He had been taking the now-withdrawn drug for eight months before being stricken in May 2001.

His widow had won a $253 million verdict against New Jersey-based Merck in 2005, but Texas punitive damage caps later cut that to about $26 million.

Also Thursday, a New Jersey appeals court voided $9 million of the $13.9 million awarded to John McDarby in 2006 by a jury in Atlantic City.

The panel found that New Jersey's Product Liability Act was pre-empted by the federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act. McDarby survived his 2004 heart attack.

Thursday's rulings give Merck 11 victories and three losses stemming from the trials that reached verdicts, with the damages now reduced in one of those losses. Retrials are pending in a few cases.

Merck pulled Vioxx in September 2004 after its own study showed Vioxx doubles risk of heart attack or stroke.

The New Jersey ruling also upheld a verdict in favor of Merck in the case of Thomas Cona, who survived a June 2003 heart attack. His case was heard simultaneously in Atlantic City with McDarby's case.

All three cases -- Ernst, McDarby and Cona -- were excluded from the settlement Merck reached in November in which it agreed to pay $4.85 billion to end thousands of other Vioxx lawsuits.

According to the company, some 45,000 eligible claimants had initiated enrollment in the settlement as of March 31.