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I have dedicated my law practice for the last 25 years to the wrongfully injured and their families. The purpose of this blog is not to provide legal advice. If you need legal help you can contact me at cplacitella@cprlaw.com or visit our website at www.cprlaw.com. Thank You

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Next Vioxx trial set to get under way - Yahoo! News: "NEW ORLEANS - The next federal Vioxx trial, which opens in federal court here on Monday, focuses on a man who began taking the painkiller after its label said that it could increase the risk of heart attacks.
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But Robert Garry Smith, 56, said he didn't realize the drug, once a blockbuster for Merck & Co., might have brought on his February 2003 heart attack until he saw a lawyer's television advertisement in 2005.
'I was a perfectly healthy man until I took Vioxx and I had a heart attack,' Smith, a maintenance supervisor at a chemical plant in the Cincinnati suburb of Covington, Ky., said in a pretrial deposition.
The other nine plaintiffs whose cases have been heard so far in state and federal courts all began taking Vioxx before April 2002, when Merck added information in the label's 'precautions' section to say that using the drug could increase the risk of heart attacks.
The questions of whether that information should have been in the stronger 'warnings' section, and whether Merck should have added it two years earlier, have played major parts in those trials.
About 16,000 Vioxx lawsuits have been filed in state and federal courts, and Merck has said it wants each case heard on its own. However, U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon has said he wants to work out a global settlement for the 5,700 federal Vioxx cases on his docket after hearing just five of them.
After the first verdict came in, Fallon had lawyers for the plaintiffs and for Merck each choose two other cases for early trial in his court. Smith's case is the second of this group of four, and the first that was chosen by Merck.
Seven other cases have been heard in state courts in Texas, New Jersey and California. Merck has won five cases and "

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