Associated Press, "Judge Denies Request for Delay in Vioxx Trial"
A judge on Tuesday declined to postpone the first wrongful-death trial related to the painkiller Vioxx but said he would check questionnaires filled out by potential jurors for evidence that they were biased by pretrial publicity. "For now, we're going to keep going," state District Judge Ben Hardin told lawyers for Merck & Co., the manufacturer of Vioxx. Merck asked for a two-month delay to allow for a "cooling-off" period for any bias that could taint a jury pool arising from news coverage of a separate lawsuit Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott filed last week against the drug maker. For more information about the Vioxx case and Vioxx lawsuits, please visit our stand-alone Vioxx website, Vioxx Legal Resources.com.