Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- About 43,000 plaintiffs who sued drugmaker Merck & Co. over its Vioxx painkiller have registered for possible payouts under a $4.85 billion settlement, a company official said.

About two-thirds of the 60,800 people who sued over the drug signed up by today's deadline for payments, Kent Jarrell, a Merck spokesman, said in an interview. For the deal to take effect, 85 percent of all registered claimants must agree to the accord.

``We expect to meet and exceed the 85 percent threshold,'' Jarrell said.

Merck and attorneys for Vioxx users initially negotiated the settlement to resolve an estimated 26,500 lawsuits over claims Vioxx damaged users' hearts before the company withdrew it in 2004. Merck spent $1.2 billion fighting lawsuits before the accord, winning 11 of 16 cases that went to trial since 2005. Merck said it planned to give an update on the registration tally at a Jan. 18 federal-court hearing in New Orleans.

Plaintiffs' lawyers must recommend that all of their Vioxx clients participate under the accord. If a former user or his family opts out of the deal, the lawyer is required to drop them as clients.

A group of user lawyers backing the settlement have traveled around the U.S. explaining the deal since it was announced Nov. 9. Vioxx user lawyer Andy Birchfield said he's met attorneys in cities such as Denver, Houston, Los Angeles and Atlanta.

``The response has been overwhelmingly positive,'' said Birchfield, of Montgomery, Alabama. Still, not all Vioxx claimants are happy with the company's settlement offer.

Some Objections

T.M. Kara, a retired federal government worker who used Vioxx, said he's unhappy that estimates show he's only entitled about $220,000 under the settlement and objects to the provision requiring lawyers to dump objecting claimants as clients.

``If you'd have gone out and hired an attorney several years ago and had him get up to speed on the case, it would be a real imposition on you to go out and find a new one to start over,'' said Kara, a Norwood, Missouri, resident.

Lawyers for some Vioxx users have questioned whether that provision forces lawyers to violate ethical duties to clients. Some attorneys are considering mounting a challenge to that section of the accord.

Settlement Details

Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, and the plaintiffs' lawyers struck an agreement that sets aside $4 billion for heart attack cases and $850 million for stroke claimants. The agreement outlines a three-step system for how Brown Greer, a law firm in Richmond, Virginia, will evaluate injuries.

Plaintiffs must prove they actually had a heart attack or stroke, that they took at least 30 Vioxx pills and that they took the medicine within 14 days of their injury. If they pass those three tests, they will enter either the heart attack pool or the stroke fund for further evaluation.

As a compromise by Merck, the settlement doesn't require plaintiffs to show that Vioxx caused their injury. During the trials, the company always contested the issue of causation.

Plaintiffs' lawyer Mark Lanier said that if lawyers miss today's registration deadline, he expects U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon in New Orleans to allow clients still to participate in the settlement. Fallon is overseeing thousands of federal Vioxx lawsuits consolidated in his court.

The Payout

``It will mean that those lawyers' clients, however, might be the later group paid out ultimately,'' said Lanier, a Houston lawyer who won a $253 million jury award from Merck over Vioxx.

The Vioxx accord followed 11 months of secret negotiations prompted by Fallon and state court judges in New Jersey, California and Texas who are overseeing the cases. During their talks, the lawyers met two dozen times in cities including New Orleans, Washington, Atlanta and Memphis.

Merck trails Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson, the largest and second-largest drug companies.

The case is In re Vioxx Products Liability Litigation, MDL 1657, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).

To contact the reporters on this story: David Voreacos in Newark, New Jersey at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net; Laurence Viele Davidson in Atlanta at lviele@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 15, 2008 20:57 EST