Trial Cut Short in Calif. Gardasil Vaccine Injury Case Over Kennedy’s Confirmation

LOS ANGELES — A California judge has cut short a long-awaited trial in a case in which a woman alleges that the Gardasil human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine caused her to develop an autoimmune disease over concerns that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as health secretary might influence jurors.

Plaintiff Jennifer Robi’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, told the Los Angeles Times that Merck & Company Inc. agreed to delaying the trial, which had been proceeding in the Los Angeles Superior Court for three weeks, because his team was worried that extensive publicity around Kennedy’s Senate confirmation hearings may taint the jury.