Jury gets federal Vioxx case in New Orleans

In closing arguments in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, the attorney for the plaintiff Charles Mason told jurors that Merck indeed knew Vioxx could cause heart attacks and actively suppressed critical information about the health risks associated with the pain medication.

"They knew before the drug ever went on the market that there was a risk of heart attack," Mason's attorney, Ed Blizzard, argued. "The fact of the matter is they weren't trying to warn anybody."

Mason, 61, who took Vioxx for 10 months to treat back pain from an old injury, blames the drug for the heart attack he suffered in 2003.

Merck pulled the drug from the market in September of 2004 after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke in patients taking it for at least 18 months.

The most recent count showed Merck & Co. was facing nearly 24,000 lawsuits from people who claim to have been harmed by the drug that once had $2.5 billion a year in sales.

Merck's lawyers argued that there were other risk factors which caused the plaintiff’s heart attack; not Vioxx.

"He had plaque in his arteries and that's what caused his heart attack," Merck attorney Phil Beck told the jury.

Merck also argued that the company's scientific evidence showed the increased heart risk from Vioxx came only after 18 months of continuous use and noted that Mason took the drug for 10 months. They also pointed out that he had stopped taking Vioxx a few days before the heart attack.

Mason's lawyers maintained that the adverse effect of the drug lasted longer than the four or five days that Mason had stopped taking the medicine.

Of 10 Vioxx lawsuits that have gone to a jury verdict so far, Merck has won six of them. But a New Jersey state court judge ordered one of the victories to be retried after ruling that some new evidence had come to the surface.

The federal trials have been presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Eldon Fallon.

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