$253 Million Verdict Against Merck in First U.S. Vioxx Trial

Robert Ernst was 59 years old and had been taking Vioxx for about eight months to relieve pain in his hands when he died in May 2001. Vioxx (rofecoxib) was Merck's heavily marketed arthritis painkiller, prescribed to millions of Americans. Merck pulled the drug from the market in September 2004 after a clinical trial showed patients taking it faced a significantly elevated risk of heart attack and stroke. By that point the company had sold the drug for five years.

Carol Ernst, Robert's widow, filed suit against Merck in Texas. The case was assigned to the District Court of Brazoria County in Angleton and became the first Vioxx case in the country to go to trial. Merck's defense was that Ernst died of an arrhythmia, a cardiac condition the company maintained Vioxx had not been linked to. The plaintiff's theory was that the drug had in fact caused a fatal heart attack.

W. Mark Lanier of the Lanier Law Firm served as lead trial counsel for Carol Ernst. Lanier pressed the jury to look at the internal evidence of what Merck knew and when, arguing the company had signals of cardiovascular danger well before the withdrawal and continued marketing the drug without adequate warning. The causation fight was central: Lanier had to persuade jurors that the medical evidence pointed to a heart attack, not an arrhythmia, as the cause of Robert Ernst's death.

On August 19, 2005, after deliberating roughly 10 hours, the jury found Merck liable on all major counts and awarded Carol Ernst $253.4 million in total damages. It was a landmark outcome: the first plaintiff's verdict in what would become thousands of Vioxx cases. Merck's stock fell as much as 8 percent in the immediate aftermath.

Texas law caps punitive damages at twice the amount of economic damages plus an equal amount of non-economic damages, a formula that slashed the award sharply. The trial court reduced the total to approximately $26 million, cutting the punitive portion by more than $200 million. The reduction did not alter the verdict's significance. More than 4,000 additional Vioxx claims were pending nationwide when the jury returned its decision, and Merck ultimately settled the broader litigation for $4.85 billion in 2007.