By Dan Levine and Mike Spector
(Reuters) – Merck and a woman suing the drugmaker agreed to halt a trial over alleged injuries from the drugmaker’s human papillomavirus vaccine in a case with ties to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the company and an attorney for the plaintiff said.
Merck and the plaintiff plan to reconvene in a Los Angeles state court in September with a new jury, the company said in a statement provided to Reuters.
Kennedy, confirmed as HHS secretary last week, played an instrumental role in organizing mass litigation against Merck over Gardasil before taking office, but has not been involved in the Los Angeles trial after entering an initial court appearance in the case. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Prior to his confirmation, Kennedy, 71, was an environmental lawyer who long sowed doubts about the safety and efficacy of vaccines that have helped curb disease and prevented millions of deaths for decades.
On Friday, plaintiffs’ lawyers approached Merck and proposed the jury be discharged and the case adjourned, the company said. Merck agreed “subject to an explicit stipulation that Merck would provide no financial or other consideration in exchange for the agreement to adjourn,” the company said.
Mark Lanier, an attorney for plaintiff Jennifer Robi, said in a text “it was really tough having the trial while the (Kennedy) confirmation hearings were ongoing.” Lanier said he was uncertain whether the Kennedy hearings would have a positive or negative impact on jurors, and decided it was better to reconvene in September with a new jury. A new scientific study about Gardasil is also expected by then, Lanier said, without elaborating.
Both Merck and Lanier also pointed to upcoming proceedings in another Gardasil case consolidating lawsuits in a North Carolina federal court that might affect the Robi case as a reason for the delay.
The unexpected agreement to adjourn the case occurred after the trial had been underway for several weeks, the culmination of a lawsuit filed in 2016 that had survived legal challenges from Merck to make it before a jury.
“It seems to me unusual for plaintiffs, who have been working for this, to want a delay,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Law San Francisco who specializes in legal and policy issues related to vaccines.
Robi, 30, was vaccinated with Gardasil as a teenager and claims the shot led to impaired mobility that confined her to a wheelchair. Her lawsuit also claims that Merck marketed the vaccine as safe while concealing knowledge of dangerous side effects. Merck has denied the claims.
“Merck remains confident that it will prevail in the Robi litigation based not only on the scientific evidence and defenses that it had presented during plaintiff’s own case, but also the additional evidence Merck would have presented in its defense, which had not even begun when plaintiff’s counsel proposed the adjournment,” the company said.
“An overwhelming body of scientific evidence, including more than 30 years of research and development along with real world evidence generated by Merck and by independent investigators, continues to support the safety and efficacy profiles of our HPV vaccines,” the company added.
Before his confirmation, Kennedy said in response to questions from a Senate committee that he would divest his financial interest in Gardasil litigation to his non-dependent, adult son. He had previously said he would retain a financial interest in cases he referred to Wisner Baum, one of the law firms suing Merck over the HPV vaccine alongside Lanier.
Wisner Baum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gardasil is recommended as a routine immunization for 11 and 12-year-olds by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent cervical and other cancers caused by the virus. Nearly 160 million doses were distributed in the U.S. through the end of 2022, federal data show.
(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco and Mike Spector in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
