Before I start spouting out my opinion, let me just give one caveat; I'm fairly ignorant on this subject, and may be basing my conclusions on some incorrect assumptions.

Anyway... The Vioxx lawsuit. Some woman's dead husband had been taking Vioxx for a while, and supposedly it caused a heart problem and he died and it's all Merck's fault, so the jury awarded the woman like $360 million. I don't care who you are, you're not worth that much money, and you're especially worth a lot less dead. My understanding is that millions of people use Vioxx to aleviate arthritis pain, and that they now think like 1 out every million or so may develop heart problems related to Vioxx. I wonder what the actual number is. Obviously at some point it does become a bad thing, but one out of a million I'm not going to blame Merck for. More people die in car accidents or by eating too much fast food, and their widows or widowers don't get hundreds of million of dollars. I think monetary awards in cases like this are ridiculous. It drives up insurance rates, and it makes it tougher for a company like Merck to make more or better drugs. If it's discovered they are truly at fault (and is a Jury valid to be making a medical decision like this?), I think a smaller award to the victim's family would be more proper. I don't know how much, I'd have to read more about the subject, and maybe go to law school and think about it a lot. I don't think precedent is valid here, because we've always given too much money in these sort of cases.