Notable 2007 Jury Verdicts: $47.5 million Vioxx verdict helps prompt global settlement

Nine months before Merck reached a global settlement with thousands of Vioxx plaintiffs, a New Jersey jury awarded one man $47.5 million for a heart attack caused by taking the painkiller drug for just two months.
Frederick “Mike” Humeston lost his first trial against Merck in November 2005, but in August 2006, Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee ruled that evidence uncovered since the verdict warranted a new trial.
In March, after an unusual multi-phase trial, jurors awarded Humeston $20 million in compensatory damages and $20.5 million punitive damages despite his brief use of Vioxx.
Lead plaintiff’s attorney Christopher Seeger of New York City said there were only “subtle changes” made in strategy between the two trials.
In addition to the new evidence about Vioxx research, “we did a much better job taking very complicated scientific concepts and spoon feeding them to the jury so that they could see the [defendant’s] wrongdoing,” he said.
Seeger also indicated that the verdict – the largest Vioxx verdict still standing – served as a catalyst for to the global settlement.
Humeston, a 62-year-old postal worker from Idaho, only took Vioxx sporadically for a total of approximately two months. A Vietnam War veteran, he suffered from pain caused by shrapnel in his knee. Although he only used the drug for a short period of time, he claimed that it caused his heart attack in September 2001 and filed suit in 2003 – well before Merck pulled Vioxx from the market in September 2004.
The defense maintained that “Merck acted responsibly every step of the way, from researching Vioxx to monitoring the medicine when it was on the market to voluntarily withdrawing it,” said Kent Jarrell, a spokesperson for Merck’s outside counsel. “In addition, Merck consistently made study results available to the FDA and the medical community.”
The defense also maintained that Humeston’s heart attack was caused by other factors unrelated to Vioxx, Jarrell said.
But jurors disagreed, awarding Humeston $18 million in compensatory damages and $2 million to his wife, Mary.
In December, the parties announced a global settlement of Vioxx cases. Without admitting any wrongdoing, Merck agreed to set up a $4 billion fund for claims relating to heart problems and an additional $850 million fund for stroke claims. Estimates put individual plaintiffs award’s at an average of $100,000 before legal fees and expenses.
The settlement will not affect the Humeston case and its subsequent appeals, however.
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Verdict: $47.5 million total
$27.5 million in punitive damages
State: New Jersey
Type of case: Product liability
Trial: 8 weeks
Deliberations: 2-3 days
Status: A motion to set aside and/or reduce the verdict is still pending before the trial court judge.
Case name: Humeston v. Merck
Date of verdict: March 12, 2007
Plaintiff’s attorneys: Christopher Seeger, David R. Buchanan and Moshe E. Horn of Seeger Weiss in New York, NY; W. Mark Lanier of The Lanier Law Firm in Houston. (first phase of the trial only).
Defense attorneys: Diane Sullivan and Hope Freiwald of Dechert in Philadelphia; Paul Strain of Venable in Baltimore.