Merck Moves to Exclude Business Ethicist's Testimony in Vioxx Suit

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - A business ethics professor whose opinion about Merck's conduct in the years leading up to its decision to pull Vioxx from the market should not be heard by jurors in the nation's second Vioxx trial, attorneys for the company argue in a brief filed recently. Humeston v. Merck & Co. Inc., No. ATL-L-2272-03 (N.J. Super. Ct., Atlantic Cty.).

Merck says in its Aug. 8 brief that the opinion of Professor W. Michael Hoffman Ph.D. regarding Merck's business ethics is 'not even conceivably relevant' to the case in which he has been designated to testify and that …