It’s too soon to know, says Tim Anderson, a securities analyst at Prudential Equity, after hearing that a New Jersey appeals court ruled that a state court must reconsider a lawsuit that wants Merck to pay for medical monitoring for potentially hundreds of thousands of Vioxx users.

“If the courts find in favor of medical monitoring, this would open up a whole new can of worms for Merck,” he told Pharmalot. “But until we have that verdict it is difficult to estimate how it impacts the company. Medical monitoring can be expensive, and it creates longer-term uncertainty as to eventual financial liabilities.”

The plaintiffs in this lawsuit didn’t experience any harm after taking Vioxx, but want they want Merck to pay for echocardiograms for anyone who took any dose of the painkiller for at least six consecutive weeks. Theoretically, that could amount to hundreds of thousands of people. How fast can you say Echo mill?

[tags]Merck, Vioxx[/tags]