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To: zeta1961 who wrote (84210)	11/5/2004 3:19:19 PM
From: Captain Jack	Respond to of 793711

Looks like Breck Boy will be busy.eom

To: zeta1961 who wrote (84210)	11/5/2004 3:24:52 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793711

Bush's tort reform may increase the hurdles I hope so! If you want to read about how this meeting works, and how the sharks make Billions out of this, read "The King of Torts," by John Grisham.

To: zeta1961 who wrote (84210)	11/5/2004 3:27:31 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793711

My take? Merck and its insurers are screwed. 27,000 deaths at a minimum of 500K each equals $13.5 billion before Merck's defense costs are thrown in. That is an absolute minimum. If it more like $1 million per case, then $27 billion. These are still low amounts. That doesn't even include the punitive damages, which under recent law can be a single-digit multiple of the total award, so multiply by two or three. Ten to fifteen percent of $13.5 billion to $27 billion, plus costs, is a tidy fee the class action/mass tort boys, especially since the work has been done for them by the FDA and Merck itself. Juice it up by a factor of two or three, and you can see that the attorney fees amounts--$8-12 billion--are huge for a case that promises to be not too much of a fight. Pure gravy. Have you seen the ads? vbg Edwards will try to get in on it, I suspect. Don't know what Merck's insurance program is. But it surely has coverage for some level of catastrophic incident like this, so some insurers are likely to get hammered, too. I doubt that anything can be done politically to get Merck off the hook. Plus, it sounds like they kind of deserve to be hit. Bankruptcy? Quite possible, if the awards start to get much higher than those I suggest, which are modest, on the whole. I wouldn't touch Merck stock with a 10 foot pole. From a legal standpoint, I doubt that any federal tort reform effort would apply to Merck. Merck is likely screwed in a big way.

To: zeta1961 who wrote (84210)	11/5/2004 4:32:32 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 793711

The only tort reform I've seen recommended are caps on non-economic damages. In the case of the death of a working man or woman in mid-life, to get present value, a quick and dirty calculation is to multiply present earnings times work life expectancy. If the person was making $30K and was 45, multiply $30K times 20 years = $600K in lost wages. Don't factor in inflation because the plaintiff would get a lump sum which could be invested, so the two assumptions (future inflation vs. future interest) cancel out. If the decedent was younger or making more money, that increases lost wages, and vice versa. If the person didn't die but is permanently disabled, then you add in not only lost wages, but future medical care, only this time the multiplier is life expectancy, not work life expectancy. As you can imagine, this can add up. Then throw in the capped amount of non-economic damages, say, $500K. It's a disaster for Merck. Even if caps on non-economic damages are put into place, they won't (can't) apply retroactively. Retroactive caps are a violation of due process.