Attorney Kenneth B. McClain on Friday filed a Vioxx Class Action Lawsuit against Merck & Company on behalf of Caroline Nevels, of Lexington Missouri, over the 2002 death of her daughter.

The lawsuit, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court, is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and money for medical monitoring of Vioxx patients.

On September 30, 2004, Merck announced the immediate withdraw of Vioxx from all markets worldwide after a study confirmed that it increases the risk of serious cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes.

Shelly South began taking Vioxx in 2000 and was hospitalized with chest pains in 2002. Ms. South was thirty-four when she died.

Studies from as early as 2000 indicated Vioxx may increase a patients’ risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Merck estimates 105 million U.S. prescriptions written for Vioxx from May 1999 through August 2004. Based on this estimate, the company estimates that the number of patients who have taken Vioxx in the United States since its 1999 launch is approximately 20 million, Merck said in a press release.

Worldwide sales of VIOXX in 2003 were $2.5 billion.

“Vioxx was a very profitable product for Merck with sales of nearly $2 billion a year in the last two years. In fact, Merck spent $160 million in the first year of the drug’s release to promote Vioxx, more than was spent advertising Pepsi or Budweiser during the same period,” McCain said in a press release.

(via Humphrey, Farrington & McClain, P.C.)