When the pharmaceutical company Merck pulled painkiller Vioxx off the market after a study linked it to heart attacks and strokes, lawsuits against the drug maker were already under way across the country.

A lawsuit has been filed in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, AL against Ford Motor Company and Continental-Tire of North America.

Merck & co.’s internal investigation of the withdrawal of its Vioxx painkiller will take months to complete and won’t hide any facts, said John Martin Jr., a retired federal judge hired to conduct the probe.

After Martha Lawler lost her job at Atlantic Bell in 1993, she fell behind on her house payments. Then her troubles really started.

A lawsuit has been filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court against Ford Motor Co. and Continental General Tire of North America in connection with an SUV accident earlier this year that left a Montgomery woman paralyzed.

Attorneys representing 39 U.S. law firms met at a New Orleans restaurant and chose two lawyers-one of them from Alabama-to lead federal lawsuits targeting Merck & Co.’s Vioxx painkiller.

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley said he wants to find out why the Food and Drug Administration didn’t pursue safety concerns about Merck & Co.’s painkiller Vioxx, the biggest drug ever recalled.

At least five medications now sold to consumers pose such risks that their sale should be limited or stopped, said a government drug reviewer who raised safety questions earlier about the arthritis drug Vioxx.

Congress is looking into whether the Food and Drug Administration shirked its duty by ignoring safety concerns about Vioxx raised by its own reviewers and outside scientists.

The American public is "virtually defenseless" if another medication such as Vioxx proves to be unsafe after it is approved for sale, a government drug safety reviewer told a congressional committee Thursday.