Articles Posted in Products Liability

The Vioxx jury is working on Saturday. Read about it here.

For reaction of some lawyers to the latest news concerning the NEJM story, go here.

Honda and its expert, Robert Gratzinger, got caught “wrongfully and intentionally alter[ing] the most significant physical evidence in [a products liability case.” The judge sanctioned them, but then sealed the order as part of a settlement of the case.

Trial Lawyers for Public Justice found to open the record to the public eye (read the motion here)and finally succeeded. Here is how it puts the describes the matter: “The court found that by intentionally destroying marks showing that Davis had been wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident – the ‘single most critical issue’ in the case – Honda had ‘attempted to rob’ the plaintiff ‘of her right to litigate on a level playing field.’ As a sanction, the court held Honda liable for Davis’s injuries and ruled the jury would only decide how much in damages Honda paid Davis.” Read the entire press release here.

Here is a copy of the now unsealed order.

The New England Journal of Medicine, hardly a tool of the plaintiff’s bar, has concerns that Merck not only played dodgeball but actually hid the ball. AP puts it this way: “Vioxx maker Merck & Co. concealed heart attacks suffered by three patients during a clinical study of the now-withdrawn painkiller in a report on the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000, the journal wrote in an editorial released Thursday.”

The editorial said this: “Taken together, these inaccuracies and deletions call into question the integrity of the data on adverse cardiovascular events in th[e earlier] article.” And this: “Excluding the three heart attacks “made certain calculations and conclusions in the article incorrect,” the doctors wrote, adding that they have asked the report’s authors to submit a correction to the journal.

A federal court jury is deliberating the third Vioxx case as this post is being written.

The judge wanted it done quick – and the defense rested after just a few days of testimony. Read more here.

The article says that the jury is expected to get the case by mid-day tomorrow (Thursday).

Here is the latest news on the first federal MDL trial currently underway in Houston.

The judge wants this case over quickly; the plaintiffs put on their case in less than five days and the defense has already called several witnesses. Here is a summary of a key witness for the plaintiff who was not called in the two prior trials.

By now everyone has heard of the troubles for Dr. Ray Harron, the radiologist who read as many as 150 x-rays a day at $125 each, the results of which efforts were used as support of the claim of 75,000 asbestos claimants. As this article from today’s NYT demonstrates, the defense lawyers are going after him. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what is going to happen next.

Aren’t you glad you did not use this gentleman as an expert? Don’t you know that there are dozens and dozens of lawyers who are sitting in their offices right now wondering when the process server will show up with a subpeona and a deposition notice? Or worse?

I hope that Dr. Harron is clean. If he is not, I hope that the lawyers who employed him did not know he was not.

The federal judge heading up the Vioxx MDL will permit the plaintiffs to call expert witnesses to prove that short-term use of Vioxx can cause cardiac problems.

Read about the ruling and other Vioxx news here.

Ok, I have lived long enough to have some idea how the world works. I do not pretend to understand how the world works, mind you, I just have some idea how it works.

I knew that it was not by happenstance that drug reps tended to be attractive women (and men). But it never came to my mind that the drug companies would be actively recruiting cheerleaders to sell drugs. Read this story from the New York Times.

I love this quote: “T. Lynn Williamson, [a] cheering adviser at Kentucky, says he regularly gets calls from recruiters looking for talent, mainly from pharmaceutical companies. … ‘They don’t ask what the major is,’ Mr. Williamson said. Proven cheerleading skills suffice. ‘Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm – they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want.'”

Fresh off the heels of a recent loss, Chris Seeger and his team are gearing up for more Vioxx cases state court in New Jersey. The judge has decided that one of seven cases will be tried starting January 30, 2006. Each of the cases are on behalf of a person who took Vioxx 18 months or longer; one of the people died.

Cases in which the plaintiff took Vioxx for 18 months or longer are expected to be more difficult for the defense to try.

The next New Jersey case will begin March 27, 2006.

Regular readers will remember that several weeks ago I wrote about the opinion by Judge Jack in a group of silicosis cases pending in Texas.

At the time I wrote “this story will not and should not die.” Well, it has not died. The business community has grabbed this bull by the horns and intends to ride it until it is dead, buried, and fully decomposed. For but one example, read this story in Business Week Online.

Here is a quote from the article: “Expensive investigations into the legitimacy of medical diagnoses, which led to the Jack opinion in In Re: Silica Products Liability Litigation, are just the beginning. Corporate complaints about mass tort fraud have spurred criminal convictions, ongoing criminal probes in three states, and an inquiry by the House Energy & Commerce Committee. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also begun building a database that will be used to identify relationships among screening companies, doctors, plaintiffs’ law firms, and claimants, and keep an eye out for repeat plaintiffs. ‘We are at a turning point,’ says Lisa A. Rickard, president of the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform. ‘The business model that the plaintiff bar has been using in mass torts is now coming into question and under scrutiny not only by judges but by prosecutors.'”