On February 16, 2005, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ruled that cases alleging injury from the use of the pharmaceutical drug, Vioxx, pending in various federal district courts across the country should be transferred to one district court for coordination. The Panel decided that the cases should be transferred to the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans and appointed Judge Eldon E. Fallon to conduct the coordinated and consolidated proceedings. Transfers are made by the Panel pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1407, upon the Panel's determination that the transfers will result in the convenience of the parties and witnesses and will promote the just and efficient conduct of the cases.

The first status conference was held on March 18, 2005 and conferences to review the status of the proceedings and deal with various issues coming before the Court have been held every month since then, including a period of several months when the MDL Court was forced to move to Houston, Texas for approximately four months because of Hurricane Katrina. Thus far, 22 Joint Status Reports and monthly status conferences have taken place. Copies of the Joint Reports are located on the Court’s website, as are transcripts of the monthly status conferences.

Over the course of the last 19 months, through September 30, 2006 (and despite Hurricane Katrina during which time the Court continued to function with minimal disruption):

Approximately 22 million pages of documents and a terabyte of data have been produced by Merck to the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee ("PSC"). The PSC has uploaded and houses these documents in the Plaintiffs’ depositories;
 

Documents produced by third parties have been received by Merck and the PSC.
 

The Court has ruled on various motions relating to document production, all of which can be located on Lexis-Nexis File & Serve, or the Court’s website.
 

More than 310 depositions have been noticed in the MDL relating to 168 witnesses. Depositions have been taken for more than 145 days and now comprise over 35,000 pages of testimony.
 

The Court has ruled on over 270 substantive motions and has dealt with more than 1,000 ongoing procedural motions, all of which can be located on Lexis-Nexis File & Serve, or the Court’s website.
 

The Court has also conducted six trials (one case was tried twice after the jury in the first trial hung). The first trial was conducted while the Court was temporarily located in Houston, Texas, and this case was re-tried in New Orleans. The last four have been tried over a four month period in New Orleans, one every month through the conclusion of 2006.

In addition, the PSC has advised that during the course of this litigation it has had weekly phone conferences to address the status of the litigation and approximately 20 PSC meetings. Further, numerous phone conferences of various PSC committees take place on a regular and ongoing basis.

Further developments in the MDL introducing Orders dealing with specific issues are posted routinely on the Court’s website. These are posted periodically to apprise litigants and others about the progress and activity of this MDL proceeding.