April 20, 2006

In a piece in the National Law Journal, Peter Geier notes that Peter Bicks and John Brenner, litigators with no connection to the Vioxx case, both seem to agree that Merck's strategy-- continuing to address the cases one-at-a-time-- appears to be working, and that the recent verdict in McDarby was not as damaging as one might think. But as plaintiff's lawyer Brian Blevins observes in the same piece, Merck's stock price suffers with each plaintiff win. How long, Blevins wants to know, before it stops making economic sense to fight rather than settle? Kind of a grim question.