Merck knew of potential harmful side effects of its drug Vioxx and failed to notify doctors, a lawyer for a man who claims the painkiller caused his heart attack said Tuesday in opening statements of the first Vioxx liability case to go to trial in California.
"Merck knew of these potential side effects and never told a soul," said attorney Thomas Girardi, who represents plaintiff Stewart Grossberg.
Grossberg's lawsuit is one of more than 13,000 such claims against Merck nationwide. Some 2,000 of the lawsuits were filed in California and consolidated in Los Angeles Superior Court by Judge Victoria G. Chaney.
The outcome is expected to serve as a guide for navigating through other California cases involving Vioxx, which was put on the market in 1999 as a treatment for arthritis and acute pain in adults and was pulled two years ago amid concerns it increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes with long-term use.
Girardi said that testing inadequacies such as excluding patients with a history of heart disease clouded the experiments and that the company had a "careless disregard" for patients for not warning doctors of the potential for heart attacks and strokes.
Company memos dating to 1996 showed that Merck was aware of the potential side effects, he said.
The company nevertheless hired 3,000 sales people and trained them to downplay the risks when talking with doctors, Girardi said.
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