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March 27, 2007

Assume the Position

I think the world's coming to an end.

Merck's Vioxx did not cause woman's death: jury
... Plaintiff Frank Schwaller sued Merck after his wife, Patricia, took Vioxx for 20 months for shoulder pain before dying from a heart attack in August 2003.

The state court jury also found Merck adequately warned Schwaller's doctor about Vioxx's dangers and that the doctor knew of the risks.

Lawyers for Schwaller, from Granite City, Illinois, alleged that Vioxx was defectively designed, inadequately tested, dangerous to human health, and lacked proper warnings, which subjected users to risks of heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses.

Merck argued that Schwaller's preexisting risk factors -- a family history of heart disease, morbid obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and sedentary lifestyle -- were responsible for her sudden cardiac death.

...The vote was unanimous from the seven-woman, five-man jury.


It's as if millions of personalinjurylawyervoices cried out...and were suddenly silenced.

For a minute, anyway.

Posted by tree hugging sister at March 27, 2007 12:28 PM

Comments

It was the silence caused by John Edwards ceasing to breathe.

Posted by: Firehand at March 27, 2007 12:38 PM

Fantastic. Where is all this recent judiciary common sense coming from? More to the point, where did the MSM find the cojones to write about it?

Posted by: Cullen at March 27, 2007 12:45 PM

Probably the whole column of text was compassionately tilted; but still, well done. The only thing these suits will do is make the next drug of Vioxx's class twenty years later and ten dollars more expensive per pill.

Posted by: Nightfly at March 27, 2007 01:08 PM

I sense a sudden disturbance in the American Bar Association's Force...

Posted by: Mr. Bingley at March 27, 2007 01:14 PM

Somewhere, a puppy died.

Posted by: The_Real_JeffS at March 27, 2007 02:13 PM

Sense? In a courtroom?

Where am I, and what have they done with the USA??

Posted by: leelu at March 27, 2007 02:29 PM

"The only thing these suits will do is make the next drug of Vioxx's class twenty years later and ten dollars more expensive per pill."

Nightfly - no insurer will pay that price. What these suits really do is decrease research dollars flowing into diseases that are not life-threatening, because cancer patients don't sue the drugmakers who prolong their lives.

The next advance in arthritis is going to be a long time coming.

Posted by: John at March 27, 2007 04:21 PM

John - good point; I stand corrected.

Posted by: Nightfly at March 27, 2007 05:18 PM

why continue to blame an out-of-control tort system on lawyers? Everyone loves to hate a lawyer, but why don't we all look in the mirror.

You and me and our friends and our relatives are the dumbass jury members who have long found liability in absurd circumstances, and voted for huge damage awards.

Yeah, I know, I know, those sneaky, sneaky lawyers tricked us into giving Billy Bob who never earned more than six bucks an hour in his life a $20 million lost income damage award. Sneaky damn lawyers.

Posted by: BlacquesJacquesShellacques at March 27, 2007 06:02 PM

You know, Jacques? You're absolutely right. Which was my point in posting. NOT that the injury lawyers were harmed by this, but that they were confronted with a jury that FOR ONCE didn't think to themselves:

"HEY! If we give these a$$holes a gazillion bucks, maybe someone'll do it fer us some day! Sh*t howdy, let's STICK it ta them corporate bastards!"

That is the truly astonishing part.

Posted by: tree hugging sister at March 27, 2007 06:15 PM

Well, the big thing I'm learning, well, maybe confirming, is that there is no logic in law. The juries are restricted by their instructions, and the lawyers shape those instructions, but the real culprits are the judges who decide on the instructions, and then the judges get to create new laws and legal rules out of thin air, too.

This has been especially true for product liability. Judges make all the rules as to whether any of the factors listed by the plaintiff above are relevent, and can control what the jury is allowed to decide.

For instance, the judge could have decided that a man's obesity was not relevent to the case (hard to do that, but anything can happen) and if he did that, then it would be hard to convince the jury that he caused his own death.

So, it's the judges, who in most cases are appointed by politicians, that are to blame.

That means it's the politicians who are to blame.

Which means that it's our fault for electing the scum into office.

Posted by: Mike Rentner at March 27, 2007 06:58 PM

I've got jury duty in 2 weeks. Do not get arrested in NJ in the next few days.

Posted by: Mr. Bingley at March 28, 2007 08:43 AM

You kidding? I was counting on you to acquit me.

Posted by: Nightfly at March 28, 2007 12:07 PM

Bingley, I would have say that expecting the person you're trying to be someone arrested AFTER you receive your jury summons is an extraordinary (and unjustified) faith in the efficiency of our justice system. ;-)

Posted by: Dave J at March 28, 2007 07:09 PM

That's true, Dave. Let me modify the above: Those of you arrested in 1997 are sooooo screwed!

Posted by: Mr. Bingley at March 29, 2007 07:18 AM

( A walk down memory lane for those interested in "fantastical jury decisions".)

Posted by: tree hugging sister at March 29, 2007 10:30 AM

The 1997 thing actually reminds me of something I came across a couple of days ago at work, a Supreme Court decision about a guy convicted of murder and sentenced to death. From arrest to trial to conviction to appeal to refusal to Supreme Court to opinion - TOTAL - took one calendar year. He was originally scheduled to die three months after they caught him, but he got a stay while they were mulling over his objections.

I'll have to try to find it again, it was a random result in a search I had to do, so I'm not sure I can get it back on cue. It was sometime in the late 19th century, as I recall. (The case, not the search. I'm not THAT slow!)

Posted by: Nightfly at March 30, 2007 02:45 AM