Thanks to Supreme Court de­ci­sion, Mer­ck gets an­oth­er chance to throw out Fos­amax claims

In a tem­po­rary re­lief for Mer­ck amid on­go­ing le­gal dra­ma sur­round­ing its os­teo­poro­sis drug Fos­amax, the Supreme Court has va­cat­ed the judg­ment of a low­er court and di­rect­ed it to re­con­sid­er a rul­ing that al­lowed law­suits to go to tri­al.

While the jus­tices did not weigh in on the mer­its of those law­suits, the de­ci­sion re­vives Mer­ck’s hopes of throw­ing out hun­dreds of pa­tients claims, which ac­cuse the phar­ma gi­ant of vi­o­lat­ing state laws by ne­glect­ing to warn them of risks as­so­ci­at­ed with Fos­amax for over a decade. Even though sci­en­tists had spec­u­lat­ed that Fos­amax — a bis­pho­s­pho­nate de­signed to pre­vent os­teo­porot­ic frac­tures — could in­crease the risk of atyp­i­cal femoral frac­tures be­fore the FDA ap­proved the drug in 1995, the la­bel did not fea­ture a warn­ing on that score. De­spite sub­se­quent ev­i­dence from pa­tient re­ports con­firm­ing the risk, a warn­ing was not added un­til 2010 fol­low­ing an or­der from reg­u­la­tors.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER