• Kentucky cases tried in...
• Vioxx suits piling up...
• Family of 6-year-old gets...
• Family gets $900,000 settlement...

Lawyers want Kentucky cases tried in state courts
By Kay Stewart

The Courier-Journal


Lawyers who filed suits against Vioxx- maker Merck in Kentucky said yesterday they will fight to have the cases decided by local juries. One attorney said a New Jersey jury's verdict in favor of Merck yesterday may have partly reflected the location of the company's headquarters in the state. "It's like real estate -- location, location, location," said Al Hollon,a former commonwealth's attorney in Perry County who has filed 75 suits over Vioxx in Perry and Clay counties.


Hollon and Gregory Bubalo, a Louisville lawyer who is part of a legal coalition calling itself the Vioxx Working Group, said they believe the rules are more favorable to their clients in Kentucky's state courts than in federal court.


Merck has pushed for the Kentucky cases to be transferred to a federal court overseeing the state and federal lawsuits throughout the country, Bubalo said.


In Kentucky, Bubalo's group has filed more than 170 lawsuits against Merck, which pulled Vioxx from the market last year after it was linked to heart attacks and strokes. Most cases claim the drug caused heart attacks or strokes, but at le ast six of the suits involve claims of wrongful death. Merck officials have said the company acted responsibly in developing, marketing and distributing the drug.


Some of the cases filed in Kentucky have been transferred to a federal judge from New Orleans who is operating temporarily out of Houston because of Hurricane Katrina.


Judge Eldon Fallon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana is overseeing the cases.


Bubalo said his group is filing motions asking that those cases be sent back to Kentucky courts. "We're fighting to keep them in Kentucky and we want to try them in Kentucky," he said.


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Saturday, October 1, 2005

Vioxx suits piling up in state courts
Thousands in U.S. allege drug unsafe
By Kay Stewart and Jason Riley

The Courier-Journal


Kentucky courts have been flooded in recent weeks with hundreds of lawsuits against pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. over its banned drug Vioxx, which was pulled from the market a year ago yesterday. No one has an exact number of Kentucky lawsuits over the once-popular painkiller, but more than 130 have been filed in Jefferson County alone just this week, swamping clerks with thousands of documents.


An association of lawyers from three Louisville firms -- calling itself The Kentucky Vioxx Working Group -- has filed more than 170 suits in 38 Kentucky state courts -- including 19 wrongful-death lawsuits.


Among them is a suit filed by Bedford resident Richard Southworth, whose 30-year-old wife died in 2000 of a blood clot to both lungs, a month after taking Vioxx for a knee injury. "When a doctor prescribes something, you think everybody's done their job and it's safe to take the drug they are giving you," said Southworth, who had two children with his wife, Candra. "There's no way to explain what I went through."


The increase in lawsuit filings was expected near the anniversary of Merck's Sept. 30, 2004, announcement that it was pulling the pain-relief drug off the market after a study found it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes.


Lawyers said they were concerned that suits might not be accepted more than a year after the drug was pulled -- though they contend that more suits, especially wrongful-death cases, could still be filed. In the past year, more than 5,000 suits have been filed in state and federal courts throughout the country over Vioxx, said Kent Jarrell, a spokesman for the Merck legal team.


The company expects that most of the suits will end up before a federal judge in New Orleans, who has been designated by a national judicial panel to handle the massive litigation, Jarrell said. Several of the Kentucky suits already have been designated for transfer to that court. In addition to the more than 170 state suits, 84 suits have been filed in Kentucky's federal courts -- but many of those were transferred from the state courts. Indiana federal court dockets show 48 cases filed against Merck since Vioxx was pulled from the market. Plaintiffs in the suits blame Vioxx for causing or contributing to their strokes or heart ailments. Some are claiming the drug caused death.


Another claim is that Merck knew the risk of Vioxx at least a few years before it took the drug off the market -- it started selling the drug in May 1999 -- but downplayed the dangers and continued to promote the drug. Linda Bader, a Jefferson County plaintiff, said she never would have allowed her mother, Violet Bailey, to take Vioxx for arthritis had she known about the dangers. "People that take this trust the people who put it on the market," she said. "We had no idea. We trust the market."


Violet Bailey, 84, had a stroke in March 2004 after taking Vioxx for four years and now cannot read or write and requires constant and costly care. "The money is going so fast," Bader said. "The one prayer I have now is that my money can last as long as my mom." Jarrell said the company maintains it did nothing unethical and pulled the drug once the risks surfaced. He said the suits are complicated by the fact that studies showed Vioxx had to be taken continually for at least 18 months to cause increased health risk, and many people who took the drug already had other conditions such as obesity and high blood pressure that could have caused their health problems. "Merck acted appropriately when it came to development, testing, marketing and distribution of Vioxx, right up to the voluntary withdrawal last Sept. 30," Jarrell said.


In August, a jury in Texas awarded a plaintiff $253 million in a Vioxx-related case, the first to go to trial since the drug's exit from the market. Because of caps on awards in Texas, the amount is expected to be reduced to $26 million, Jarrell said.


A second state trial is under way in New Jersey, and a federal trial is scheduled for Nov. 26 in Houston, where the New Orleans federal court is operating because of damage from Hurricane Katrina, Jarrell said. Gregory Bubalo, one of the Louisville attorneys in the Vioxx working group, said the damage to families has been incalculable. "Merck knew even before it marketed this drug that its risk outweighed its benefits and that it could cause heart attacks, strokes and any other injuries related to blood clots," he said. ". We're fighting one of the biggest corporations in the world."