$4.85 Billion Vioxx MDL Settlement for Heart-Attack and Stroke Victims
Won by Beasley Allen (co-lead counsel), Seeger Weiss (co-lead counsel), Herman, Katz, Gisleson & Cain (liaison counsel), Ashcraft & Gerel, LLP (steering committee), Kline & Specter, PC (steering committee), Robinson Calcagnie, Inc. (steering committee), The Lanier Law Firm (steering committee), Weitz & Luxenberg (steering committee) and 9 other firms.
As chair of the plaintiffs' negotiating committee and Liaison Counsel in the Vioxx multidistrict litigation, Russ Herman directed the negotiations that produced a $4.85 billion settlement with Merck resolving approximately 45,000 to 50,000 personal-injury claims.
What happened
Merck launched Vioxx in 1999 as a prescription painkiller for arthritis and acute pain. For five years the drug generated roughly $2.5 billion annually, but internal and external studies were accumulating evidence that it significantly increased the risk of heart attack and stroke. On September 30, 2004, Merck voluntarily withdrew Vioxx from the worldwide market after a clinical trial confirmed that patients taking the drug for at least 18 months faced twice the cardiovascular risk of those on a placebo.
The withdrawal touched off one of the largest mass-tort actions in American legal history. Thousands of individuals who had suffered heart attacks or strokes while taking Vioxx filed suit, and the cases were consolidated before U.S. District Judge Eldon E. Fallon in the Eastern District of Louisiana as MDL-1657. The litigation eventually gathered claims from an estimated 45,000 to 50,000 plaintiffs across the country.
Judge Fallon appointed Russ Herman of Herman Herman and Katz Plaintiffs' Liaison Counsel in February 2005, and on April 8, 2005 he appointed a Plaintiffs' Steering Committee with Andy Birchfield of Beasley Allen and Christopher Seeger of Seeger Weiss as co-lead counsel. The other members were Richard Arsenault, Elizabeth Cabraser, Thomas Kline, Arnold Levin, Carlene Lewis, Gerald Meunier, Troy Rafferty, Drew Ranier, Mark Robinson and Christopher Tisi. The court later appointed six Negotiating Plaintiffs' Counsel, with Herman as chair: Herman, Birchfield, Seeger, Levin, Edward Blizzard of Blizzard McCarthy and Nabers, and Thomas Girardi of Girardi and Keese. They sat across the table from Merck's lawyers in more than 50 meetings and several hundred phone conferences before the settlement was announced.
On November 9, 2007, Merck and the plaintiffs' leadership announced a $4.85 billion resolution. The agreement was structured to pay eligible claimants who could provide medical documentation of a qualifying heart attack or stroke. Merck did not admit liability as part of the deal. Herman described the outcome as 'a great day for the court system.'
The settlement stood as one of the largest product-liability resolutions in U.S. history at the time of its announcement. By the filing deadline, the program was on track to close out the bulk of domestic Vioxx personal-injury claims under a single coordinated framework administered by BrownGreer PLC.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Becker, Specter and Kline, How Not to Manage a Common Benefit Fund: Allocating Attorneys' Fees in Vioxx, 9 Drexel L. Rev. 1 (2016) (lists PTO 6 PSC members)
- 2.In re Vioxx Products Liability Litigation, Pre-Trial Order No. 32, Appointment of Allocation Committee (E.D. La. Nov. 20, 2007)
- 3.In re Vioxx Products Liability Litigation, Order & Reasons on common benefit fees (E.D. La. Aug. 9, 2011), 802 F. Supp. 2d 740
- 4.In re Vioxx Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 1657, Pretrial Order No. 6C (E.D. La. Apr. 10, 2008): names the six court-appointed Negotiating Plaintiffs' Counsel
- 5.CBS News: 'Merck to Settle Vioxx Suits for $4.85B'·Archived copy
- 6.U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana: MDL-1657 Vioxx contacts page·Archived copy
- 7.Bloomberg News: 'Merck Shares Rise on $4.85 Billion Vioxx Settlement' (Nov. 9, 2007)
- 8.Insurance Journal (Nov. 12, 2007)·Archived copy
- 9.NPR (Nov. 9, 2007): independent news coverage of the Merck Vioxx settlement announcement·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Herman, Katz, Gisleson & Cain
All Herman, Katz, Gisleson & Cain proven verdicts →A New Orleans jury ordered the major tobacco companies to fund a statewide smoking-cessation program for more than 200,000 Louisiana smokers who became addicted before 1988, awarding $591 million in one of the largest class-action verdicts against the tobacco industry.
Representing more clergy abuse survivors in the Archdiocese of New Orleans bankruptcy than any other firm, Herman, Katz, Gisleson and Cain helped push a five-year Chapter 11 proceeding to a $230 million settlement confirmed in December 2025, with additional recovery against Travelers Insurance still pending.
An Oklahoma lineman sent to help restore power after Hurricane Gustav was electrocuted near Jennings, Louisiana, when a line he had been told was dead was re-energized. He suffered severe burns, a partial foot amputation and lasting neurological injury. An Orleans Parish jury put 50 percent of the fault on Entergy, and the Fourth Circuit entered judgment against Entergy for its half of the amended damages, $4,811,015, which stood after the Louisiana Supreme Court denied review.
A 27-year-old longshoreman lost his left leg above the knee in December 1987 when a bundle of steel fell on him while he unloaded a barge in Peoria, Illinois. After a bench trial in New Orleans, the court entered judgment of $1,722,640 against the stevedore that had loaded the barge. The Fifth Circuit upheld the finding of negligence and the damages, sending back only the interest calculation.
Related product liability verdicts
Sullivan Papain was among the firms representing New York State against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard, securing a $25 billion recovery through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.
C. Steven Yerrid, the youngest of Florida's 11-lawyer 'Dream Team,' added racketeering and conspiracy charges that tripled the damages ceiling, helping the state secure what was then the largest civil settlement in American history against the tobacco industry.
As co-lead counsel in the federal Roundup multidistrict litigation and the first firm to sue Monsanto in 2015, Weitz and Luxenberg helped negotiate a $10.9 billion settlement resolving approximately 125,000 non-Hodgkin lymphoma claims against Bayer-owned Monsanto.
After fifteen years of litigation and three failed bankruptcy maneuvers by Johnson and Johnson subsidiaries, Ashcraft and Gerel attorneys R. Bryant McCulley and Michelle Parfitt helped negotiate a global, uncapped settlement of at least $5.5 billion covering approximately 76,000 ovarian-cancer claims.