Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Suit against Merck dismissed as too late

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 14, 2007

NEWARK, N.J. - A federal judge in New Jersey has dismissed a securities class-action lawsuit brought against Merck & Co. by investors over its one-time blockbuster drug Vioxx because the statute of limitations has run out.

Shares of Merck soared to their highest price in 3 1/2 years, hitting $50.31 on the New York Stock Exchange before closing at $50.21, up $3.85, or 8.3 percent.

Investors had charged Merck with providing misleading information or omitted details that Vioxx, its pain reliever, increased the risk of heart disease. They claim the shares they bought were thus inflated because they didn't properly reflect the heart risks.

But Judge Stanley R. Chesler of the U.S. District Court in Newark said in a ruling Thursday that "the court finds that it is clear that storm warnings of fraud by the company existed more than two years before this complaint was filed."

Sarbanes-Oxley, the corporate-governance law enacted in July 2002, set a deadline of two years for securities fraud claims after the discovery of the facts or five years after the violation, whichever is earlier.

Chesler wrote that the clock started ticking on Sept. 21, 2001. The plaintiffs filed the first Vioxx-related securities class-action lawsuit on Nov. 6, 2003.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported that a state judge is about to try to dispose of thousands liability lawsuits over Vioxx in Texas.

[Last modified April 14, 2007, 01:43:01]