Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra Recall

After dragging its feet for over three years, denying that it will never settle and fight each case one by one, and blaming the victims, Merck has finally decided to settle with Vioxx victims.

What are the terms of the settlement?

Your total payment will be around $100,000 but depending on your agreement with your attorney (they generally take a 30-50% cut) and if you had taken a cash advance against your settlement, you will get the balance.

Should you take the settlement?

It does seem that for someone whose loved one is dead (60,000 Americans died due to Vioxx), this is a slap in their face. At the same time, if your loved one was obese, was a heavy smoker, and had other illnesses like diabetes and heart disease, it will be an uphill battle to fight the case.

It also seems that most lawyers are ready to settle and move on. You may have a hard time fighting such a case.

If you were only injured (heart attack or stroke), while you are at high risk of death for the rest of your life, it is best to take the money and run.

What are the next steps?

It is the best time to discuss your situation with your attorney. If you are not satisfied, it is still not too late to find another attorney and understand out your options.

Yet another Vioxx victim has lost his case to Merck because like millions of other Americans he was obese. Refik Kozic of Florida had atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease in the vessels that supply blood to the heart, including the vessel where the heart attack actually occurred. He also had high cholesterol that probably contributed to his illness.

This has been a very effective line of attack used by Merck that has won several cases using this argument even though there is no doubt that Vioxx killed as many as 60,000 Americans and injured at least twice as many. The main challenge before the victims is to prove that in the court if they have other health risks, which many Americans do considering that two out of three Americans have a weight issue.

Merck has not paid a single penny yet to even victims who have won their cases. The company is vigorously fighting each lawsuit though this is just one of the two dozen or so cases that have gone to trial out of as many as 30,000 cases.

Merck has done a pretty good job of blaming the patients for suffering from heart attacks and strokes caused by Vioxx. It has also had some help from the fact that so many Americans are either overweight or obese and suffer from a variety of ailments like diabetes, cardiovascular complications, etc..

As a result, while the company has paid over a billion dollars in fees to its attorneys, it is yet to pay a penny even to victims (Carol Ernst, John McDarby, Gerald Barnett, Mike Humeston, and Leonel Garza) who have won their lawsuits against the company.

The company also managed to successfully fend off a class action lawsuit from insurers and labor unions but the company is still in deep trouble. It faces close to 30,000 lawsuits for causing the death of as many as 60,000 deaths and 140,000 injuries.

Now in a major blow to its legal strategy, The State of New York is suing the company for Medicaid fraud. Six other states - Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Utah and Texas - have sued the company for knowingly hiding the dangers of Vioxx and lying to this day about its risks that it knew.

“Merck’s irresponsible and duplicitous conduct endangered the health of New Yorkers and wasted our tax dollars,” Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement. “Even as evidence was piling up showing just how dangerous this drug was, Merck put profits above all else.”

“We are confident that our behavior has been responsible,” said Kent Jarrell, a spokesman for Merck’s legal defense team. A statement that surprised no one since Merck has refused to admit that Vioxx is a killer drug and that the company did anything wrong.