A US jury last night ruled against Merck & Co in a case related to the company's withdrawn arthritis drug, Vioxx.
The New Jersey jury ruled Merck & Co must pay $47.5 million in damages after finding that Vioxx was responsible for a plaintiff's heart attack and that the company was reckless in promoting the drug.
In the second phase of a two-part trial, the jury in Atlantic City also found that Frederick Humeston's doctor would not have prescribed Vioxx to his patient had he been aware of the heart risks associated with the drug.
The jury awarded $18 million to Mr Humeston and $2 million to the his wife in compensatory damages. The jury later voted 8-0 that Merck's behaviour was "willful and reckless" and ordered the drugmaker to pay an additional $27.5 million in punitive damages.
Merck said it intends to appeal the verdict and damages.
In the first-phase of the trial, the jury last week found that Merck failed to provide adequate warnings about health risks tied to the drug, which was pulled from the market in September 2004 after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke in long-term users.
The jury also in the first phase found that Merck committed consumer fraud by making misrepresentations concerning the drug's heart risks and that it intentionally suppressed or concealed material information from physicians prior to the plaintiff's heart attack.
The Humeston case was a retrial of a suit the drugmaker had won only to have a New Jersey Superior Court judge throw out the verdict after ruling new evidence had come to light that Merck had excluded from the original trial.