Judge Eldon E. Fallon, presiding judge over the federal Vioxx consolidated proceedings, In re Vioxx Products Liability Litigation MDL (No. 1657), ordered a new trial today in Evelyn Irvin Plunkett v. Merck & Co. Judge Fallon, a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, found that there was clear and convincing evidence that during the second trial of the Irvin case, Merck's expert cardiologist, Dr. Barry Rayburn, misrepresented his qualifications to the Court and to the jury.

A woman whose husband died of a heart attack after taking the painkiller Vioxx deserves another chance to convince a jury that the drug caused his death because an expert witness in an earlier trial misstated his credentials.

Celebrex is in the same category as Vioxx, which was recalled by its manufacturer, Merck & Co., on Sept. 30, 2004, and has since faced an avalanche of injury claims across the country.

Five plaintiffs claim they suffered heart attacks, strokes or other serious injuries and economic damages as a result of taking the pain-reliever Celebrex in a suit filed April 5 in Madison County Circuit Court.

Merck's defense witness Jerome Cohen, M.D., a St. Louis cardiologist, said his ties to pharmaceutical companies did not influence his opinion that Vioxx did not cause Patricia Schwaller's death.

The trial pits Frank Schwaller, whose 52-year-old wife Patricia Schwaller died after using Vioxx, against the drug's maker Merck Pharmaceutical.

Fresh off a federal court defeat in December, Birchfield is laying out for Madison County jurors pretty much the same argument he has in the past, that Vioxx caused heart attacks and that "Merck worked hard to keep the truth quiet."

Whether the maker of Vioxx withheld information about the drug's risks was the point of opening statements Wednesday in a crowded Madison County courtroom.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck ignored warnings and tried to cover up risks associated with its blockbuster painkiller Vioxx, a lawyer Wednesday told the jurors in the case of a Granite City woman who died suddenly of a heart attack after spending 20 months on the drug.

Merck & Co. put profits ahead of consumer safety by hustling a blockbuster arthritis medicine to market, then routinely denied the drug's potentially lethal health risk.