W. Mark Lanier, the folksy Texas attorney who won a blockbuster $256.3 million judgment against Merck over the painkiller Vioxx, will head a legal "dream team" of law firms going after the drug maker. Yesterday, the attorney said he has assembled a list of 20,000 additional people who claim the drug caused them injury and threatened to launch a wave of lawsuits in state courts. "We've got the best courtroom lawyers, we've got the best mass tort lawyers... and we've got the best negotiators that America has to offer working together on a dream team that is Merck's biggest nightmare," he said. "We call it kind of the 'Legal Godfathers.'"
Some legal analysts believe Lanier's strategy is intended to force a global settlement. Cynics will note that the press conference came on the same day that the drug maker announced its third-quarter results, numbers which show that the company is still financially capable of absorbing litigation.
- see this article from The Washington Post