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 HOUSTON (AP) - The nation's first federal Vioxx trial ended Monday with a hung jury, but the case involving the 2001 death of a Florida man who took the once-popular painkiller for a month will be retried, a judge said.
The mistrial leaves Vioxx's maker Merck & Co. with the prospect of facing a new jury that could hear allegations that the company withheld information from the New England Journal of Medicine about a 2000 Vioxx study so the drug would appear safer than it was. Merck shares fell almost 3 percent as the trial's outcome shook investors worried about the company's liability in the thousands of pending Vioxx cases; Merck has already lost one state-level case and won another.
Only one of the nine jurors refused to absolve Merck of liability, two jurors who voted in favor of the drugmaker told The Associated Press.
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