Personal Injury and Social Security Disability Blog

Texas Sues Merck Over Vioxx

02:33 PM CDT on Thursday, June 30, 2005

Associated Press

AUSTIN — The state of Texas sued one of the nation's largest drug companies Thursday, alleging Merck & Co. misrepresented the safety of the painkiller Vioxx.

State Attorney General Greg Abbott said Merck pushed to have Vioxx on the state's list of approved medicine covered under Medicaid. The lawsuit seeks $168 million and says the company willfully misrepresented its studies and physicians' concerns that the drug may increase the risk of heart problems and strokes.

“This is a prime example of a company's drive for profit steamrolling its duty to be safe,” said Abbott, adding that Texas was the first state to sue Merck for Vioxx prescriptions covered by Medicaid.

Officials at Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck didn't immediately respond when asked for comment Thursday.

Merck began marketing Vioxx in 1999 after brief clinical trials but voluntarily withdrew the drug in September when research showed that patients who took it for a year and a half or more doubled their risk for heart attack and stroke.

Abbott's office said Texas pharmacists filled more than 700,000 Vioxx prescriptions for 178,000 patients under the Medicaid program at a cost of $56 million. State law allows Abbott to seek triple damages for acts of fraud.

The lawsuit, filed in Travis County district court, does not include Texans who received Vioxx through private health insurance plans, and the state — not individuals — will collect any judgment, Abbott said.

The state alleges Merck violated the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act.

“The people of Texas have been cheated and defrauded by Merck,” Abbott said.

Exceptions to the Hearsay Rule

For those lawyers who need a little Continuing Legal Education credit, here's a very brief seminar on exceptions to the hearsay rule. Thank you to Lisa Solomon for discovering this hilarious jewel.

Link of the Day - Statutes of Limitation

Lawyers who represent injury victims frequently need to know the Statute of Limitations in a state other than their own. Pennsylvania attorney Edgar Snyder has a good list of state Statutes on his Web site.

Link of the Day - ATLA

Any lawyer who regularly represents injured or disabled people should be a member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, ATLA. This is the largest plaintiff's bar association in the world, and works very hard to support consumer rights in the United States, as well as to support the rights of trial lawyers.

Link of the Day - Dallas District Court Rules

A simple site that lists the local rules of the civil district courts of Dallas County, Texas.

Eminent Domain Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today 5-4 that local governments may exercise the right of eminent domain for the purpose of private development that will bring more tax money to the government than the homes that will be destroyed.

The case is Kelo et al v. City of New London, 04-108.

I don't like this decision at all. My clients are the people living in the homes in poorer parts of town, where this development will probably occur. The houses may be small and cheap, but they are still homes to my clients.

Knowing how politics works, all it will take is some large campaign contributions from real estate developers, and my clients will be booted out of their homes.

On the bright side, there will be a lot more work now for condemnation lawyers...

Link of the Day - Info.com

This search site has the potential of dragging me away from Google. Info.com searches across a number of other search engines, including Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Altavista, and others. That's not new, but Info.com also shows tabs for Web, News, Pictures, Shop & Compare, Yellow Pages, etc. So you can do your search, then click on the appropriate tab to further limit the returned sites. It's an interesting site.

Link of the Day - Web Translations

I wouldn't trust this site for a translation of a legal document, but it can be helpful in a pinch. Bablefish will translate a block of text or an entire Web page from and to a surprising variety of languages. It's great for those times you need to translate a Web site from Dutch to French...

Link of the Day - LegalEngine.com

An early legal research portal is LegalEngine. A very simple interface, with a lot of material behind it.

Passing the Musical Baton

Jim Calloway, of the Oklahoma Bar association, used to be one of my favorite people, and his Web site, Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, one of my favorite sites. But now he has fallen pretty much to the bottom of my list by tagging me with this Musical Baton "virus."

OK, here go my long-winded answers:

1. What is my total volume of music?
   I have hundreds of CDs, and, somewhere in storage, many more tape cassettes and vinyl albums. (I did manage to avoid falling into the 8-track tape fad.) Embarrassingly, I have so many songs downloaded under the Napster subscription plan that I had to upgrade from a 200MB external hard drive to a 300.

2. What is the last CD I bought?
   Technically, the last CD I bought was Company You Keep, by John Gorka. I like him, and have several of his albums, but I bought this CD to give to a friend. There is one song on the CD named People My Age, which I found quite appropriate to read aloud at his 60th birthday party. The last music I bought was the VH1 DVD, Warren Zevon: Keep Me In Your Heart. That is a simultaneously funny and gut-wrenching video diary of Zevon's last months -- when he was recording The Wind after learning he had terminal cancer.
   
3. What song is playing right now?
   Right now, I'm watching a Tivo of the end of the third round of the U.S. Open golf tournament, but if not for that, I would be listening to whatever song was playing on channel 15 on XM Radio -- the Folk Village Channel.

4. What five songs do I listen to a lot because they are special to me?
   I'm going to side-step some of the sentimentality, and give a generic answer.  (Besides, I couldn't narrow it down to five songs if you held a gun to my head.) The music that evokes some of the strongest memories for me is that of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and other folkies of the mid to late 60's. Like Jim Calloway, I've been to some, but not enough, Jimmy Buffett concerts. Jim also mentioned Marcia Ball. I saw her give a fantastic performance at Poor David's Pub in Dallas years ago. The Stones remind me of the days I was dating my wife, Cinda.

   My two favorite recently-deceased songwriters are Townes Van Zandt and Warren Zevon. Some of my favorite songwriter/singers are: Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Nancy Griffith, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Mary Black, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Buffett, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine, Steve Goodman, Robert Earl Keen, Jr., Guy Clark, and the guy with the best singing voice ever, Jimmy LaFave. My parents will get mad if I don't mention that my brother, Dr. James Kraft, is a history professor by day, but a jazz guitarist (and a darned good one) by night, in Honolulu.

5. Five people I'm passing the musical baton to?
   I'm going to be like Jim, and not burden five people with this chore. I'll choose four people I have learned much from in the past, and hope they don't hold this against me in the future.

  I'm passing the musical baton along to Matt Homann (the nonbillable hour), Reid Trautz (Reid My Blog!), Carolyn Elefant (My Shingle), and Larry Bodine (Larry Bodine's Professional Marketing Blog).