Vioxx trial awards $253 million?? US input requested.. :)

Redleg

The fire is everything
Staff member
ANGLETON, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas jury on Friday found drug maker Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) negligent in the death of a man who took its popular painkiller Vioxx and awarded his widow $253 million (141 million pounds) in the first of thousands of Vioxx lawsuits to go to trial.
The case filed by widow Carol Ernst charged that Vioxx had caused her husband, Robert Ernst, a 59-year-old marathoner who took the drug for eight months, to die of a heart attack in 2001.
Merck disputed the accusation, saying an irregular heartbeat and clogged arteries killed Ernst, not Vioxx.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsA...C968678_RTRIDST_0_USREPORT-MERCK-VIOXX-DC.XML

The main reason why I've posted this wasn't the Vioxx lawsuit itself, but the "award" of $253 million!? :shock:

Is this a "usual" amount in large lawsuits in the US, and is it likely that she'll get paid that amount if Merck doesn't win the appeal???

It's certainly a tragedy if it's Vioxx that caused the death of her husband, but there's supposed to be more than 4,200 other Vioxx lawsuits waiting in line after this one, and I don't think that the company will be able to pay out more than 2-3 amounts of that size if they should loose just a small percentage of the other cases as well...

Any US members here who could "enlighten" me on the US legal/lawsuit system?? :)
 
This verdict is why I despise our current legal system. Luckily Texas has some common sense.

The figure of $253 is made up of actual damages and punitive damages. The actual damages amounted to $24 million while punitive damages amounted to $229 million. The definition of actual damages is "when damages, which have been suffered by someone as a result of another's wrongdoing, can be precisely measured, they are called actual damages. Punitive damages are used to " is to punish a defendant and to deter a defendant and others from committing similar acts in the future."

In Texas, punitive damages cannot exceed $2 million so the actual verdict is $26 million. I believe this is what happened in the hot coffee case involving McDonalds where a woman spilled hot coffee between her legs, sued McD's and won $10 million. In that state, the judge had the power to reduce such punitive damages. He was able to lower it to $2 million.

What really sucks is that in some states, there are no punitive damage limits. The republicans have tried unsuccessfully to pass anti frivolous lawsuit laws a few years ago.

One more interesting bit of info. It is the jury who decides the amount for the punitive damages.

Got any more questions Redleg?
 
Doody said:
Got any more questions Redleg?

Just a couple more.. :)

Can you choose the state you want to hold the trial, or does it have to be held in the state you live in?
Punitive damages is based on the size of the company you're suing?

And Yeah, who do I have to sue to get $250 million?? :twisted:
 
If you are filing in state court, then you must file in the state you live in. Federal courts depend on the district you are in and do not follow state laws.

A month or 2 ago, Bush was able to pass a resolution that required all class action lawsuits to go through federal court. This is a move designed to protect businesses. Long term studies indicated that federal judges were not as inclined to grant large payouts as state juries. The $229 million figure supports this thesis. So instead of 4,000 people filing against Merck in a class action lawsuit, Merck will face over 4,000 individual lawsuits.

Don't ask me how I know all this mumbo jumbo :?

As for suing someone for lots of money...I have an idea for you. Since the fastest you can go in a car here in the US is 80 MPH, I am sure you can sue all the auto makers for designing cars that go well over 100 MPH. They are responsible for the deaths of all those idiots who speed and end their lives in a ball of fire.

We could make billions off the USA's lack of personal responsibility :firedevi:
 
"Since the fastest you can go in a car here in the US is 80 MPH, I am sure you can sue all the auto makers for designing cars that go well over 100 MPH"

but thats my favorite thing to do! :)
 
punitive damages amounted to $229 million. Its just scary. she will not live long enough to spend it and it is enough to last the next 3 generations. What does the victim list worth 200+million dollars?
 
All people being slightly different then medicines will affect people in different ways. If this goes ahead will this stop drug companies producing further drugs, when a drug com-pay produces a new drug that works well and have spent millions in field testing along will come a third world country and copy it and sell it even cheaper. The third world country will claim that the drugs are to expensive for their people so this is what they are going to do. Leaving the the people that produced this drug out of pocket by a huge sum of money.
 
LeEnfield said:
All people being slightly different then medicines will affect people in different ways.
I won't comment too much on this only because my girlfriend works for Merck (she works in another division, not the one that created Vioxx), but the central issue in these lawsuits isn't so much that different people responded differently to Vioxx, but that Merck was negligent for knowing that Vioxx could cause cardiac issues but continued to push Vioxx through the FDA approval process and insisting that there wasn't a problem with Vioxx.

LeEnfield said:
If this goes ahead will this stop drug companies producing further drugs, when a drug com-pay produces a new drug that works well and have spent millions in field testing along will come a third world country and copy it and sell it even cheaper. The third world country will claim that the drugs are to expensive for their people so this is what they are going to do. Leaving the the people that produced this drug out of pocket by a huge sum of money.
As a hospital administrator in my civilian life, I also have a core philosophical problem with how the United States runs its healthcare system, but that's for another day in another thread...
 
Back
Top