Bloomberg News (7/28, Voreacos, Johnson) reports “Merck & Co. paid claims to the families of 3,468 users of its Vioxx painkiller who died of heart attacks or strokes,” a court-appointed administrator told a judge Tuesday. “A $4.85 billion settlement fund made payments to the families of 2,878 Vioxx users who died of heart attacks and 590 who died of strokes,” according to the report. Merck “pulled Vioxx from the market in 2004 after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes.”
Well, it is nice to see families of victims obtain justice, but it is nevertheless a shame that so many lives had to have been lost before the dangerous drug was pulled from the market. Hopefully, the tragic results regarding Vioxx will compel drug companies to focus on safety above profits in the future.
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Mr. Zambri is a Board-Certified Civil Trial Attorney and Past-President of the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. He has been acknowledged by Washingtonian magazine as a “Big Gun” and among the “top 1%” of all of the more than 80,000 lawyers in the Washington metropolitan area. The magazine also acknowledged him as “one of Washington’s best–most honest and effective lawyers” who specializes in medical malpractice matters, product liability claims, and serious automobile accident claims. Mr. Zambri has also been repeatedly named a “Super Lawyer” by Law and Politics magazine (2010)–a national publication that honors the top lawyers in America.
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