A jury in Madison County, Illinois, decided Vioxx wasn’t responsible for a fatal heart attack suffered by a 52-year-old woman and, instead, accepted Merck’s argument that Patty Schwaller’s health may have posed enough risk to explain her collapse and sudden death.

As in the other Vioxx lawsuits, the widower claimed the painkiller contributed to his wife’s death and that Merck failed to sufficiently warn about the risk of heart attack and stroke. Schwaller had taken Vioxx for 20 months prior to her heart attack.

In remarks to a local newspaper, two alternate jurors yesterday say they felt Schwaller’s weight and diabetes were a factor, and had difficulty believing two witnesses. Although they had been excused, one alternate was quoted as saying there was ‘no way’ he could blame Vioxx.

This is an important victory for Merck, which took a beating two week ago in Atlantic City, where a New Jersey state court jury awarded $47.5 million to man who claimed Vioxx caused him to have a heart attack. Merck is appealing, but the eye-popping amount was a setback.

A loss in Madison County would have been just as troubling. The venue is known for being friendly to plaintiffs in such lawsuits (the American Tort Reform Association calls it a “judicial hellhole”) and so Wall Street and Merck’s insurers would have had another reason to question the drugmaker’s strategy of defending each of the 27,000 or so lawsuits filed in federal and state courts.

Coverage in The Madison Record;
Merck’s statement.

[tags]Merck, Vioxx[/tags]