Ex-Merck CEO testifies

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – In his first appearance in a Vioxx trial, the former chief executive of Merck & Co. insisted Thursday that the company was up front about the safety risks of its troubled arthritis drug during his tenure – despite a jury verdict to the contrary.

Raymond Gilmartin, 65, who retired last year after 11 years running the company, testified during a hearing aimed at determining whether Merck should pay punitive damages in addition to the $4.5 million it was ordered to pay a former Vioxx user stricken by a heart attack.

He spent the whole day on the stand, putting off until today the start of jury deliberations on punitive damages.

Dueling over semantics and Merck’s candor in the development of Vioxx, Gilmartin and plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier engaged in a series of contentious but civil exchanges Thursday.

Gilmartin rejected Lanier’s assertions that the company withheld safety data about Vioxx, which was taken by 20 million Americans before a 2004 study linked it to increased risks of heart attack and stroke.

Lanier, meanwhile, tried to show Gilmartin put profits before safety in a bid to keep Merck’s stock price up, its Vioxx sales booming and his paycheck fat.

According to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Lanier showed to jurors, Gilmartin was making about $3 million in salary and bonuses in 2000, when Merck received the results of a separate clinical study in which Vioxx users suffered five times as many heart attacks as those taking naproxen.

“But it had that value only if Merck’s stock price stayed above a certain level, right?” Lanier said, referring to Gilmartin’s compensation. Lanier also showed the jury the text of a speech Gilmartin gave to Wall Street analysts two months later in which he made no mention of those results.

The proceeding was an extension of a trial that ended Wednesday with a jury finding that Merck failed to warn doctors and the public about risks associated with the drug.

The jury said Merck was liable for 77-year-old John McDarby’s heart attack, but not the one suffered by Thomas Cona, 60, the other plaintiff in the case.

Meanwhile Thursday, shares of Merck, which faces thousands of other lawsuits over Vioxx, fell $1.15, or 3.2 percent, to close at $34.84 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange, on very heavy volume with 18.5 million shares trading hands.