On the eve of a second court battle over its arthritis drug Vioxx, Merck & Co. Inc. said on Friday it does not plan to enter into any global settlement of the thousands of Vioxx lawsuits it faces and is focused on "defending these cases one at a time." "We are in this for the long haul," Merck General Counsel Kenneth Frazier said in a telephone briefing with reporters. "We have both the resources and the resolve to address these cases over many years." Merck previously had signaled that it might consider settling some lawsuits alleging harm from Vioxx, which was pulled from the market last year after it was shown to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke in some patients. A spokesman for the company's legal team said last month that "for a relatively small set of cases that involve patients who used Vioxx for over 18 months, we will take a close look." Frazier, in his comments on Friday, did not speak of possible settlements of some cases. He said the company had no intention "to enter into any kind of global settlement" that could resolve much of the Vioxx litigation in one swoop. --More 2050 Local Time 1750 GMT
