Hurricane Relief: How You Can Help

In Mississippi hundreds are feared dead. New Orleans is filling with water. The mayor estimates 80% of the city is underwater. The economic cost of the hurricane's rampage could be the highest in U.S. history, according to damage estimates. Troops in Iraq are worried about what's happened to their homes and families.

Today Howard Dean sent an email to millions of Democrats urging Americans to do whatever they can.

"America is at its best when we realize that we are one community -- that we're all in this together. That means that each one of us has the responsibility to do what we can to help the relief effort."

The Red Cross is a great place to start.

The Association for Trial Lawyers of America is mobilizing to help members of our professional community who have been devastated by the hurricane.

"Some of our brother and sister trial lawyers have lost files and records to torrential rains and flooding, others have lost roofs and buildings to 175 mile per hour winds. Many are without power. All have family, colleagues, and clients struggling to piece together lives, homes, and businesses in the wake of one of the worst storms ever to hit the United States"

Visit this site to learn about joining a special list serve that will help facilitate aid to them from the community of US trial lawyers.

Punishing Merck for Vioxx

O’Malley and Langan would like to congratulate the team of Mike Lanier, Randy Moore and Ben Morelli, and their client, Carol Ernst, who recently had a huge victory in the first of what is proving to be an enormous number of Vioxx related lawsuits against the pharmaceutical giant Merck. On August 19th a jury in Angleton Texas awarded $253.5 million to the widow of Robert C. Ernst, a 59 year old tri-athlete who had been taking the companies once popular painkiller.

Two points come to mind considering the Vioxx verdict. First: this is big. Second: This is the right thing and lets not let the public forget it.

First, this is big. Even after Texas state limits on punitive damages drastically cut the verdict... from just over two and a half million to $26.1 the case signals serious danger for Merck. The Texas case is the first of over four thousand laws suits pending in the United States alone, with potentially thousands more surfacing in Europe, where using Vioxx to relieve arthritis pain was extremely popular. If even a significant percentage of these cases succeed Vioxx litigation stands to become the biggest medical product liability action in history according to the New York Times. While the suits won’t necessarily threaten the existence of the company, who brings in over $6 billion in cash each year, it has already caused Merck stock to plummet and could force a cut in dividends, leaving the former giant as a target for takeovers.

The second point relates to what this means for trial lawyers: this is an opportunity to assert the role of the jury system in this country. A $253.5 million judgment is bound to attract media attention and Mrs. Ernst case has proved no exception. It is important that trial lawyers in the United States do whatever they can to ensure that media attention on this issue is not manipulated by “tort reformers” to become an attack on the civil justice system.

The specifics of the Ernst may tend to lend themselves to this sort of manipulation. Mr. Ernst died of arrhythmia, which had not traditionally been linked as a side effect to Vioxx, and the coroner had not originally suggested that a blood clot was responsible, as the plaintiffs argued. Basically, while a convincing case can be made that Vioxx was the cause of death, its not as rock solid as many of the other Vioxx cases are likely to be. Ultimately, it is far more important to focus on the fact that punishing Merck is the right thing to do.

In every one of these cases there will be multiple interpretations the cause of death. That is rarely as simple as black and white, though in some cases it will be. What is undisputable here is that a pharmaceutical corporation acted irresponsibly when thousands of lives were at risk. Internal documents that came to light during the trial show that as early as 1997 Merck’s top scientists were warning them that the drug had serious cardiovascular risks, and the company deliberately obscured this evidence. (New York Times 8/21/05) In 2000 a clinical trial showed that Vioxx caused five times as many heart attacks as older painkillers. (New York Times 8/6/05) Merck rushed the drug out the door with an “accelerated and compressed” development strategy in an attempt to beat Celebrex, a competing drug by Pfizer.

Merck lied to thousands of doctors about Vioxx. In 2001 they sent out a letter to physicians stating that only 0.5 percent of patients in clinical tests experienced heart problems. According to their own records of clinical tests that number was actually 14.6 percent. (New York Times 7/20/05) A videotape was introduced in the trial showing sales representatives being trained “to play ‘Dodgeball’” with doctors’ concerns about cardiovascular problems. Merck worked to discredit doctors that didn’t prescribe Vioxx.

The company created a list, circulated internally, of 36 doctors identified as “physicians to neutralize.” (Associated Press 7/19/05) Representatives of the company also threatened Stanford Medical School Professor James Fries about a fellow medical professor who was saying negative things about Vioxx in lectures. Fries was warned the representative would “flame out” and “there would be negative consequences” for himself and Stanford. (Houston Chronicle, 7/19/05).

These are the facts that need to remain at the forefront of the Vioxx issue. The American public needs to understand that the civil justice system is in place as the only check against this kind gross recklessness. People who win file lawsuits against Merck are not the bad guys. Companies who talk about “neutralizing doctors”, in any context, are very evidently the bad guys. Lets not let anyone forget that.

"What If I Am Hurt On the Job?" Booklet Now Available Online

Due to some technical problems during the last two weeks we have been unable to update this blog as frequently as hoped, but fear not: the glitch has been fixed. During this week I will be doing some stylistic updating to the blog as well as posting some of the backed up content that was supposed to go up last week.

The first new feature is something I have been working on for a while now. In 1997 O'Malley and Langan first published a booklet entitled "What If I Am Hurt On the Job?" intended as a resource to help injured workers navigate through the often confusing world of workers compensation. That publication is now available online at this website.While the booklet should not be used in place of professional legal advice, it provides important tips and procedural information and can be a helpful first resource for those in the stressful situation of dealing with a serious work-related injury. I will soon be adding to the end of the book a guide to the Pennsylvania Specific Loss statutes that will be of particular interest to PA Workers' Comp lawyers.

Also, please notice other books that will be appearing on a rotating basis in the new "featured books" section. We will periodically update that section with books of particular interest to workers and workers comp attorneys.