May 1999
Vioxx is approved by the FDA.

March 2000
Study finds Vioxx patients had double the rate of serious cardiovascular problems compared to those taking naproxen.

February 2001
FDA advisory panel recommends warning label noting possible link to heart attacks and strokes.

September 2001
The FDA warns Merck for misleading claims about the safety of the drug.

April 2002
FDA requests that Merck add a warning on the label about cardiovascular problems.

August 2004
FDA announces results of a study that found Vioxx users were more likely to suffer a heart attack or sudden cardiac death than those taking Celebrex.

September 2004
Merck & Co. withdraws Vioxx.

March 2005
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana begins pretrial proceedings for those people pursuing their Vioxx lawsuit in federal court.

August 2005
Texas jury returns a verdict in favor of family of man who died after taking Vioxx. The jury found Merck negligent in the death of the man.

August 2006
New Orleans jury returns a $51 million verdict in favor of Gerald Barnett. Mr. Barnett, a retired FBI agent, was represented by O'Steen & Harrison and Mark Robinson.

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We have compiled the latest news on the Vioxx recall and subsequent litigation. All of the news articles on this page require Adobe Acrobat to view.

The lawyers involved in the first West Coast trial against the maker of Vioxx are butting heads over whether jurors should decide one or more of the cases at the same time.

More than 1,800 lawsuits have been filed in California against Merck & Co. Inc. alleging that executives promoted the prescription pain reliever even though they knew it might cause patients to die or suffer from heart attacks.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. vowed to fight every claim filed by plaintiffs who say they were injured by the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx. Now, with 11 cases slated for trial in the next five months, the viability of the company's scorched-earth strategy is likely to become clear.

More than 9,200 lawsuits involving 18,250 plaintiff groups have been filed against Merck, whcih pulled Vioxx off the market in September 2004. Merck took the action because of a study that showed the drug was associated with increased risk of heart attacks and strokes after 18 months of use. So far Merck's courtroom record is mixed—one win, one loss and one hung jury, all in cases involving relatively short-term of the pain drug.

A judge declared a mistrial Monday in the first federal lawsuit over the once-popular painkiller Vioxx after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

Merck & Co. emerged from its third Vioxx trial Monday with a hung jury when the panel failed, in about 18 hours of deliberations over three days, to side with the drug maker or with the wife of a 53-year-old Florida man who died after taking Vioxx for about a month.

One day in 2000 after lecturing about risks of the pain-reliever Vioxx, Harvard University professor Lee Simon got a call that shocked him.

It was from Louis M. Sherwood, then a senior vice president at Merck & Co. Inc., maker of Vioxx. Based in West Point, Montgomery County, Sherwood challenged Simon's view—later proved correct—that Vioxx could cause more strokes than a rival drug.

Sherwood didn't stop there. He said "he would hurt my career if I continued to lecture," Simon recalled. "I was astonished."