Class Action Legal News articles include legal news and lawsuit information about lawsuits filed, settlements reached and verdicts rendered in class action cases dealing with personal injury, defective products, bad drugs and other consumer law related news issues. Many of these articles include interviews from top legal professionals with guidance on legal recourse options from losses resulting from bad drugs, medical malpractice, investment fraud, personal injury, defective products and negligent employers.
Washington, DC: Legal experts say the recent court ruling in Bush's home state of Texas that failure-to-warn claims against Merck by Vioxx victims in state courts are preempted is particularly egregious due to the FDA's failure to protect the public against Merck's deceptive mass-marketing of Vioxx as a safe drug for basically 5 years.
Washington, DC: The FDA is still helping Merck escape liability for the Vioxx disaster. Texas Judge Randy Wilson, who is overseeing the Texas state court proceedings, recently granted Merck's motion to dismiss possibly thousands of lawsuits, essentially because the FDA refuses to acknowledge that Merck concealed information about the safety risks of Vioxx.
Not much has changed at Merck since Vioxx was pulled off the market. The only difference for shareholders is that instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to promote Vioxx, the attorney's fees are now costing hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
"My doctor called in September 2004 and told me to stop taking Vioxx because he heard about cardiovascular problems associated with it. One month later, I got the letter from Merck, but the damage had already been done," says Linda Long of Balton, Georgia.
Former Vioxx users could be at risk of developing strokes for years, a prominent scientist said this week after evaluating new data from a 107-page report on patients who were followed for a year after they stopped the drug
Although Merck has long maintained that the risks associated with Vioxx occur after long-term use, a recent study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, says the drug may raise the risk of heart attack for patients taking Vioxx for less than 2 weeks.