Lawsuits & Judgments

In an apparent first, a city and state have filed a joint Medicaid class action lawsuit. In this instance, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have announced that they are filed a joint class action against Merck to recover the money that the state and city agencies pad for VIOXX prescriptions. According to a press release on the Attorney General’s website, the state paid more than $100 million for VIOXX prescriptions through the state sponsored insurance funds of EPIC and Medicaid.

The suit alleges that Merck withheld information on known the drugs dangers from the prescribing physicians and if the physicians had had this information, they would not have prescribed the now recalled pain reliever.
(We suppose that the physicians would have prescribed something else and not actually saved the state any money, but that is an argument we will leave for the defense.)

The overall nature of the suit is summed up in this quote from Attorney General Cuaomo:

Today’s suit demonstrates an important new State and City partnership to fight Medicaid fraud, and I am happy to work with Mayor Bloomberg to help hold Merck accountable. Merck’s irresponsible and duplicitous conduct endangered the health of New Yorkers and wasted our tax dollars. As alleged in the complaint, even as evidence was piling up showing just how dangerous this drug was, Merck put profits above all else and put thousands at risk by continuing to push Vioxx inappropriately on doctors and patients… We will hold accountable those who put our families at risk, and we will fight back when New Yorkers are harmed and fleeced.

There are reportedly more than 27,000 VIOXX cases against Merck already and the pharmaceutical giant has bee fairly successful in getting class action thrown out, but these are two powerful entities represented by two aggressive and media savvy figures in Bloomberg and Cuomo. We would not be surprised to see a settlement in this case, but we just can’t bring ourselves to bet against Merck in these big VIOXX cases.