HOUSTON - Jurors in the first federal trial over Vioxx were to resume deliberating about whether Merck & Co. was negligent in designing and marketing the once-popular painkiller and if it failed to warn about the drug's risks.

The New England Journal of Medicine said it has discovered that data about three Vioxx patients who suffered heart attacks were excised from a crucial study sponsored by Merck & Co., making the painkiller look safer than it should have.

Jurors in the first federal trial over Vioxx were to resume deliberating about whether Merck & Co. was negligent in designing and marketing the once-popular painkiller and if it failed to warn about the drug's risks.

The New England Journal of Medicine said it has discovered that data about three Vioxx patients who suffered heart attacks were excised from a crucial study sponsored by Merck & Co., making the painkiller look safer than it should have.

Attorneys for the plaintiff in a federal trial over Vioxx filed for a mistrial, citing data that was withheld from a Merck & Co. clinical study about the painkiller when it was submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Merck & Co. put profits ahead of consumers' safety by hiding heart risks of its Vioxx painkiller, a lawyer told a jury in closing arguments of the third trial of a lawsuit filed over the drug.

HOUSTON (Dow Jones) – The first federal trial on the risks of Merck & Co.’s (MRK) Vioxx edged toward jury deliberations Thursday morning, with closing arguments from the two sides.

Telling jurors their decision will have “far-reaching consequences for how drug companies conduct their business,” the attorney for a woman who believes her husband’s short-term use of Vioxx caused his death asked the panel to send Merck a message.

The jury in the first federal case against drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc.’s Vioxx adjourned on Thursday after deliberating for about two hours over whether the painkiller contributed to a Florida man’s death.

HOUSTON- jurors deliberated about two hours Thursday without reaching a verdict in the first trial stemming from a federal lawsuit against Merck& Co. over its once-popular painkiller Vioxx.