Looking for the go-to guy on the Vioxx settlement? Look no further than Lafayette, Louisiana, where attorney Patrick Juneau has been appointed special master of the $4.85 billion settlement between Merck and thousands of patients who say they were harmed by the arthritis med.
Juneau will be in charge of apportioning those billions out to those thousands of plaintiffs. He's done similar jobs before; he oversaw one case stemming from a train derailment and another after a major chemical explosion. The latter involved 20,000 claims. Vioxx encompasses some 50,000. "This one kind of makes a lot of them not seem very big," he told the local newspaper. But don't worry. The feds will appoint deputies to help.
- here's the report from the Lafayette Advertiser
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