Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Merck and Schering-Plough, the pharmaceutical giants whose joint venture produced the blockbuster cholesterol drug Vytorin, agreed to pay $41.5 million to settle 140-plus New Jersey lawsuits lodged against the manufacturers for misleading and improper marketing of the drug and for withholding the results of a clinical trial that showed Vytorin to be a dud.

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Suffolk County, New York, officials are seeking to recover public funds spent on Vytorin prescriptions for its employees. The county contends that defendants Merck and Schering-Plough delayed releasing the results of the ENHANCE trial, which indicated Vytorin to be ineffective and in some cases inferior in reducing the growth of fatty arterial plaque than generic statins alone. From April 2006 to mid-January of 2008, Merck and Schering-Plough withheld the ENHANCE trial results while they continued to aggressively advertise Vytorin.

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