Ten months after a jury in Angleton returned a $253.4 million verdict in the nation’s first Vioxx trial, 23rd District Judge Ben Hardin signed a final judgment awarding the plaintiffs $26.1 million in damages, plus $1.25 million in pre-judgment interest.
In a final judgment signed on June 23, Hardin ordered defendant pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. Inc. to pay the plaintiffs $24.45 million in actual damages but reduced the verdict’s $220 million in punitive damages to the statutory cap of $1.65 million. The jury in Carol A. Ernst, et al. v. Merck & Co. Inc. found negligence by Merck was a proximate cause in the death of Robert Ernst, a 59-year-old Wal-Mart employee who died in 2001.
