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Two years ago, my sister died in her sleep from heart failure at the age of 47. She had been taking Vioxx for about a year and a half for a knee injury.
My brother-in-law decided to make Merck pay for the death of his wife. It was never about the money - it was about holding a huge corporation accountable for their greed and negligence. Today Merck announced a settlement.
From the New York Times:
Three years after withdrawing its pain medication Vioxx from the market, Merck announced today that it will pay $4.85 billion to settle 27,000 lawsuits by people who contend they or their family members suffered injury or died after taking the drug.
The settlement, one of the largest ever in civil litigation, comes after nearly 20 Vioxx civil trials over the last two years from New Jersey to California. After losing a $253 million verdict in the first case, Merck has won most of the rest of the cases that reached juries, giving plaintiffs little choice but to settle.
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Based on the fact that the 27,000 suits cover about 47,000 sets of plaintiffs, the average plaintiff will receive just more than $100,000 before legal fees and expenses, which usually swallow 30 percent to 50 percent of payments to plaintiffs. Plaintiffs who do not want to accept the settlement can pursue their own claims, but with so many of the top trial lawyers in the United States agreeing to the deal, they may have difficulty doing so.
--- “It’s a fantastic deal,” said Danny Becnel, a Louisiana lawyer who said he represented about 1,000 plaintiffs. Mr. Becnel credited Judge Eldon E. Fallon of Federal District Court, who is overseeing the federal lawsuits from his court in New Orleans, with pressing the two sides to the table.
I hope that my brother-in-law finds closure. The amount for each plaintiff is small but the aggregate amount Merck has to pay does, I believe, hold them accountable. I'm not surprised, btw, that the lawyers are so thrilled by this. They'll get around 2 billion dollars of the settlement.
As for me, I'll never find closure. I lost my baseball buddy who loved attending games and cheering on the A's with me. I lost my fellow Democratic activist who attended rallies, drove voters to the polls and wore her donkey on her sleeve. I lost one of the funniest, kindest friends in the world. So, today all I have to say to Merck is ----- go fuck yourselves. GO FUCK YOURSELVES.
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