November 09, 2007
Breaking: Merck Settles Vioxx Lawsuits For Almost $5 Billion
In what's got to be one of the largest civil settlements in US history, drugmaker Merck has agreed to settle class action lawsuits involving 27,000 cases for $4.85 billion. The move comes three years after Merck pulled Vioxx, a Cox-2 inhibitor, from the market in 2004, after it was revealed that the drug was causing cardiac problems and many deaths. The settlement was announced early Friday morning East Coast time. More on this later today.
Posted by Philip Dawdy at November 9, 2007 12:05 AM
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Drug settlements always end with the company never having to admit fault. I wish just once, big pharma would take responsibility for there mistakes instead of paying there way out of everything. Im sure that Merck’s $600 million annual defense fee’s for Vioxx probably had something to due with the settlement.
Relative to the Vioxx settlements, Lilly made out like a bandit given that the Zyprexa settlements totaled approximately $1.2 billion for 26,000 claimants. Lilly sold $4.4 billion of Zyprexa in 2006. One has to wonder what reasons underlie the vastly different per claimant amounts. Was it the composition of the class (I hope not!) or the nature of the damages?
