The Jury
Excerpted from Fortune magazine:
Copyright 2006, Fortune, Reproduced for Fair Use Purposes under 17 USC Section 108 by Online Media Law, PLLC
That this difficult case will be decided by a Brazoria County jury was Lanier’s choice. In 1998 Lanier won a $115 million verdict here for 21 steel workers in an asbestos case tried before the same district judge, Ben Hardin, who is presiding over the Ernst case. (The case was later reportedly settled for about $15 million.) Last year, however, Lanier lost a case in the same courtroom.
Though Brazoria County was once considered a plaintiff's paradise, its demographics have been changing. During jury selection dozens of prospective jurors voiced hostility to abusive lawsuits and expressed queasiness about awarding damages for touchy-feely injuries like “mental anguish.” (Lanier, however, appears to have been able to exclude most of them from the final panel.)
At the same time, nearly half the prospective jurors instantly raised their hands when Merck counsel Lowry asked if anyone considered Vioxx unsafe “simply” because the company had pulled it from the market. Many also raised their hands when she asked if its removal of the drug from the market “means that the company didn’t do enough research.” If the company hoped to win points with the public for erring on the side of safety—its stated public rationale for having pulled the drug—the wager may have been naďve.
Copyright 2006, Fortune, Reproduced for Fair Use Purposes under 17 USC Section 108 by Online Media Law, PLLC