Judge Refuses to delay Vioxx trial
July 5, 2005 07:13

A judge declined to postpone jury selection in the nation's first state-level wrongful death trial related to the painkiller Vioxx because he said he would not assume potential jurors were biased by pre-trial publicity. But state District Judge Ben Hardin also told lawyers for Merck, the manufacturer of Vioxx, that he would examine questionnaires answered by the pool of 100 potential jurors before making a final decision on Merck's request for a trial delay. Merck asked for a two-month delay to allow for a "cooling off" period for any bias that could taint a jury pool arising from news coverage of a lawsuit that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed against the drugmaker. Abbott alleges in the $250 million lawsuit that Merck defrauded Texans by representing Vioxx as safe when pushing for it to be included on the state's list of medicines approved for Medicaid. USA Today, 07/05/2005 For complete story, search http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/USAToday/ USA Today charges $2.50 for each archived article retrieved