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Quote by: belverron They decided on such a high amount simply because they thought Vioxx needed the punishment, which is not a valid reason by my reckoning, not with 4,000+ other lawsuits pending. Even if Merck had won that lawsuit and were to win every other lawsuit they'd have paid a fortune in lawyers' fees by the end of it.
I think such contracts would be a triumph of personal accountability. I do not believe it is correct to describe the verdict as "restricting our freedom to form contracts", however, since they made no attempt to form such a contract. |
You're right and I stand corrected - this verdict didn't specifically restrict our freedom to form contracts. More accurately, it's the strict laws that govern prescription drug sales that do that. If Merck made no attempt to use liability-limiting contracts I'm sure it did things that way because the contracts would have been legally invalid if it had. With the current litigation climate in the U.S. they certainly would have used them if they could.
What this verdict really did was increase the cost of selling drugs and give drug companies another reason to raise prices and set more money aside so they can remain profitable the next time a jury gauges them with a huge verdict. What really bugs me is that juries are punishing companies that save lives simply because a) the companies manage to make money while doing it, and b) they aren't 100% infallible. If companies were actually claiming to be infallible or making other guarantees that would be one thing, but they're not. Consumers accept certain levels of risk when they buy these drugs, but when something goes wrong and someone's relatives take their case in front of a jury, that acceptance of risk goes out the window and it's all the drug company's fault.