A Jury of Your Peers

"Whenever Merck was up there, it was like wah, wah, wah, " said juror John Ostrom, imitating the sounds of Charlie Brown's teacher makes in the television cartoon. "We didn't know what the heck they were talking about."

-Merck Loss Jolts Drug Giant, WSJ, 8/22/05

This quote really concerns me. The cornerstone of Merck's case was that the death of Robert Ernst was caused from arrhythmia, not a heart attack. Vioxx has been shown to cause problems with blood clotting, but there is not been any association with irregular hearbeats. Instead, the jury chose to focus on a potential coverup of concerns about the drug.

I know that communication requires two parties - one transmitting and one receiving. It is clearly possible that the lawyers did not structure message for the audience (the jury). What I am more concerned about is a jury ignoring scientific evidence, because they don't understand it. They deliberated on the case for a total of one hour.

Comments

[Mike]

Interestingly, Cliff Atkinson of Beyond Bullets consulted with the plaintiff's attorney and blogged about the opening statements here.

But it IS a travesty of justice that jurors treat an issue of this magnitude as though it were an episode of Judge Judy.

[Rob]

I would say a majority of the population does not understand statistics and/or science. It's a shame, because it opens them up to manipulation.