Today jurors awarded more than two-hundred fifty million dollars in damages in the first of thousands of Vioxx related lawsuits. Robert Ernst suffered a heart attack in 2001 while on the arthritis painkiller Vioxx. Today his wife won a lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant merck that made the drug she says killed her husband. Last September Merck, the drug manufacturer, pulled Vioxx off the market after a study found an increased risk for heart attack in patients taking the drug. There are over 4-thousand more state and federal Vioxx related lawsuits pending nation-wide.
