Mer­ck fi­nal­ly free from frac­ture law­suits over Fos­amax la­bel

Mer­ck is fi­nal­ly free from be­ing held li­able in more than 500 law­suits re­lat­ed to the safe­ty of its os­teo­poro­sis drug Fos­amax, end­ing a saga that spanned 14 years.

The fed­er­al dis­trict court in New Jer­sey dis­missed the cas­es in an opin­ion filed this week — af­ter al­le­ga­tions that Mer­ck failed to warn pa­tients of the drug’s frac­ture risks.

Mer­ck has bat­tled law­suits around Fos­amax for years re­lat­ed to al­le­ga­tions about its fail­ure to warn con­sumers about po­ten­tial “atyp­i­cal femoral frac­tures” af­ter tak­ing the drug. But Mer­ck has main­tained that the FDA wouldn’t al­low the phar­ma to add a warn­ing about po­ten­tial frac­tures on its la­bel.

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