Carol Ernst may receive only $26 million

While Carol Ernst was awarded over $250 million by the Texas jury that found Merck guilty of causing the death of Robert Ernst, she may get only $26 million or so since the company plans to appeal the verdict. Under Texas law, she is entitled to a much smaller amount and that is what will happen when Merck files an appeal.

This does not change the fact, however, that Merck has been found to be guilty and that is already encouraging thousands of other Vioxx victims to come forward worldwide. It is also important to note that Merck was heavily favored to win this particular case but lost it anyway for several reasons. One, Merck's internal documents provided strong evidence that Merck knew that Vioxx was a dangerous drug even before the drug was officially launched. Two, Merck had a really bad group of lawyers who did not even prepare its own witnesses. Finally, Merck attacked Carol Ernst during crosss-examination as if she was not a soft-spoken, grieving widow, but some kind of a criminal. No surprise then that Merck lost the case, and since it is not changing its lawyers, it is highly likely that it will continue to lose other cases as well.

Analysts are already predicting that if Merck loses a few more cases during coming months, the company will start to talk about out-of-court settlement - something that the company has refused to discuss out of sheer arrogance at this point.

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