Law360 reports:
“A New Jersey federal judge on Tuesday approved a $688 million settlement to settle claims that Merck & Co. Inc. and its subsidiary Schering-Plough Corp. concealed test results on the efficacy of their anti-cholesterol drug Vytorin, while also awarding $140 million in attorneys’ fees.”
Note:
“Merck and Schering-Plough offered the settlement to avert a trial scheduled to begin in March…”
And:
“…litigation accusing the pharmaceutical giants of causing investor losses by concealing the results of a Vytorin clinical study allegedly showing the drug wasn’t more effective than an older Merck drug, Zocor.”
My reading here is that: (a) investors are not happy about Merck spending big money to defend these cases – like the $2 billion for Vioxx lawyers – and (b) Merck can no longer afford to go to trial on all these cases.
The full story here:
law360.com/articles/477350/m … udge-s-nod
The more I dig into Merck, the more I see the parallels to a company called Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
It seems like half of Merck’s drugs are worthless or dangerous – sometimes to the point of being lethal – and based on bogus science. And for years they’ve hoisted them on the unsuspecting public while racking up tens of billions of dollars in sales.
But in the end, it all came crashing down on Bernie Madoff. And today he sits alone in his prison cell, biding his time until Father Time whisks him off to that big exchange in the sky.
I’ll say one thing for Bernie, though. At least he was man enough to admit his guilt.