"Supreme Court Allows Class-Action Lawsuit Against Drug Giant Merck" 21 May 2019

The Supreme Court decided to allow a class-action lawsuit against an osteoporosis drug maker to proceed and stipulated that when the matter is adjudicated, a judge, not a jury, must decide whether federal law requires that a warning be placed on the drug’s label...

The opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer came May 20 in the case known as Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht. All nine justices agreed in the judgment reached by Breyer, but there were two concurring opinions that provided different reasonings for reaching that result.

More than 500 consumers are suing the company, claiming injuries dating from 1999 through 2010 related to their use of Fosamax, sales of which brought Merck a reported $250 million in 2017 in the bisphosphonates market. Before the company lost patent exclusivity in 2008, Fosamax sales routinely generated upward of $3 billion annually...

The medication has been prescribed to prevent and treat osteoporosis in post-menopausal women since 1995. Some women have broken their femurs while using the bone-strengthening drug. The femur, located in the thigh, is the longest and strongest bone in the human body.

Litigants claim they suffered atypical femur fractures after long-term use and further claim the company knew about the risk for more than 10 years before the government, based on its own research, added information about it to the drug’s warning label in January 2011...