Vioxx Lawsuit - Protecting Consumers or Restricting our Freedom to Form Contracts?

[eigen]

Jury awards $253 million in damages to suit against drug giant Merck:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/19/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes

The human body is a complicated system that's far from fully understood. When our bodies don't work properly and people make drugs to try to treat these problems, it's far too complicated for them to predict and prevent all the unintended consequences of their drugs for everyone who might use them. Additional research can reduce unintended consequences (at the price of delays and/or cost increases), but it cannot be certain to eliminate them entirely.

If you're producing life-improving drugs, should you be allowed to sell any of them without promising blanket responsibility for everything bad that could possibly happen, or should you and your customers be allowed to negotiate who's responsible for what?

If you're sick and you want a drug that's been invented but won't be available until after you're dead because they're still working the last of the bugs out of it, should you be allowed to negotiate with the drug maker to buy it sooner with a contract that limits their liability?

If you're sick but you're also poor and you want a drug that's available but is expensive because the drug maker must set money aside so they don't go out of business when when they get sued, should you be allowed to negotiate with the drug maker to buy it cheaper with a contract that limits their liability?

If you're a juror on a product liability trial, are contracts important when people's lives are at stake?

[Chris]

Somehow I get an error 404 on that link. Was the dough awarded to just 1 person? Or loads?

[eigen]

I fixed the link - one person.

[Chris]

Then holy crap. I disagree against awarding just one person that much money even if her husband did die. They should spread the money around to other people who have suffered.

I think you should make this thread a poll as well. Mirroring the poll on the website:

Was the jury's $253 million award against Merck in the Vioxx case...

Too high
Too low
Just right
Merck shouldn't have to pay anything.

[eigen]

I was actually hoping people would tell me what they thought about the existence of the verdict, not the dollar amount.

Do you think companies should be held responsible for failures in their products regardless of whether or not they gauranteed against these failures? Do you think they should be prevented from selling their products without guarantees? I would value your feedback.

[Chris]

I actually was discussing the verdict. The dollar amount was way too much IMO. But yes I think they should be held liable, but the evidence in this case may be questionable. Its hard to prove that by his taking the drug it directly led to his death.

[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.

[eigen]

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.