July 13 (Bloomberg) -- Merck & Co. won a victory in New Jersey today when a jury ruled the drugmaker's Vioxx painkiller wasn't a cause of a 68-year-old woman's heart attack, strengthening its position in about 16,000 similar lawsuits.

Jurors in Atlantic City found Vioxx didn't contribute to Elaine Doherty's heart attack in 2004. Merck warned Doherty's doctor of the drug's risk and didn't defraud consumers, jurors said. The company lost one ruling when jurors said Merck didn't warn Doherty herself. No Vioxx jury in six previous trials was asked about warnings to a patient.

``If I were a plaintiffs' attorney sitting on the fence, I would certainly be daunted by this verdict,'' said Mike Kelly, an attorney at McCarter & English who represents drugmakers.

Merck, the No. 4 U.S. drugmaker, won two earlier trials and a split verdict in a third. The company lost three Vioxx verdicts totaling $298 million, which will drop to $48 million because of state punitive damages limits. Merck allocated almost $1 billion for Vioxx litigation and vows to fight every case.

``This really reinforces our strategy of trying every case,'' said Merck attorney Jim Fitzpatrick of Hughes Hubbard & Reed. ``We made the appropriate safety disclosures to doctors, and we demonstrated that Vioxx did not cause Mrs. Doherty's heart attack.''

Some analysts said Merck eventually will have to reach a global settlement of Vioxx litigation. The verdict today will help any such effort, said analyst Steve Brozak of WBB Securities in Westfield, New Jersey.

Shareholders' Fear

``The thing shareholders fear the most is there is no settlement that is financially suitable for Merck,'' Brozak said. ``Every time they are able to win in court, that settlement price goes down.''

Shares of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based Merck rose 24 cents to $36.94 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They have risen 16 percent this year.

Merck withdrew Vioxx when a 2004 study showed it doubled the risk of heart attacks after 18 months. Merck blamed Doherty's heart attack on her age, weight, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure and clogged arteries. Doherty, who is 5-foot-3, once weighed 265 pounds and has been a diabetic for years.

``We simply believed that the risk factors were too insurmountable,'' juror Joseph Calabrese, 43, told reporters.

Another juror, James Barnish II, 23, said: `There were multiple instances in this case where the plaintiffs failed to provide enough proof, especially in the consumer fraud case.''

Doherty didn't comment after the verdict. The jury of five men and two women decided the case on their second day of deliberations.

Failure to Warn

One of her attorneys, Gene Locks, hailed the jury's 7-0 vote that Merck failed to warn her of the drug's risks. Other juries considered only whether Merck failed to warn doctors.

``This is a huge, major, precedential verdict for plaintiffs countrywide, because this jury unanimously determined that Merck failed to adequately warn users of the drug,'' Locks said.

Merck attorney Diane Sullivan, who has won two Vioxx trials, said Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee shouldn't have submitted the consumer failure-to-warn claim to jurors.

``The duty to warn is to the physician because the physician prescribes the medication,'' said Sullivan, of Dechert, a Philadelphia law firm. ``This is an unprecedented claim in pharmaceutical liability litigation. We think we have a strong legal argument that this kind of claim should not be submitted to a jury.''

`Another Risk Factor'

Two jurors said Vioxx contributed to Doherty's heart attack.

``It didn't cause it, but it was another risk factor,'' said juror Richard Ozmore, 52.

Doherty's lawyers said she was controlling her cardiac risk factors when she had a heart attack at home in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, in January 2004. She had lost nearly 100 pounds, her blood pressure was normal, and her diabetes and cholesterol were improving, her attorney Jim Pettit said in closing arguments.

``Elaine was not a heart attack waiting to happen,'' Pettit said. ``She was under control. She never had a heart attack until she went on Vioxx. She was getting better.''

The jury found Merck didn't commit consumer fraud by using ``unconscionable commercial practices,'' misleading doctors about the drug's risks and concealing or omitting information about the risks.

Merck launched Vioxx in 1999, and the drug eventually reached $2.5 billion in annual sales.

Red Flags

Doherty's legal team sought to establish that the company ignored red flags about Vioxx's cardiovascular risks in rushing the drug to market.

The lawyers argued that Merck spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a marketing campaign that downplayed the drug's risks and trained thousands of sales representatives to dodge questions from doctors about Vioxx. They focused on a 2000 clinical study, known as Vigor, that found Vioxx caused five times more heart attacks than another painkiller, naproxen.

Pettit argued that Merck spent two years negotiating with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to weaken a warning label about the Vigor results.

Sullivan said Merck conducted dozens of studies of the drug's safety and disclosed all its data to the FDA.

Doherty and her husband, Dan, sought compensation for $194,000 in medical bills, her pain and suffering and his loss of her companionship.

The mother of three and grandmother of six testified she tires easily since her heart attack.

``I really want to see my grandchildren grow up,'' she said. ``I'd love to see one or two of them get married. That's probably not going to happen. This has probably shortened my life.''

The case is Doherty v. Merck & Co., L-638-05, Superior Court, New Jersey (Atlantic City).

To contact the reporters on this story: David Voreacos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net; Sophia Pearson in Atlantic City at spearson3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 13, 2006 17:14 EDT