Trial lawyers love drug companies: with deep pockets, poor reputations, and a customer base composed largely of people who are already sick and dying, they make the perfect targets for big-money lawsuits.

Trial lawyers love drug companies: With deep pockets, poor reputations, and a customer base composed largely of people who are already sick and dying, they make the perfect targets for big-money lawsuits. A jury in Texas has awarded approximately $253 million--reduced to around $26 million by a Texas law capping punitive damages--to a widow whose 59-year-old husband died of heart failure after taking the painkiller Vioxx. The only problem with this curious judgment is that medical experts were completely unable to determine that Vioxx caused the man's heart to fail. In fact, 70 percent of his vital arteries were already clogged long before he ever started taking the drug, which had already passed through the rigorous FDA approval process. By scaring investors out of the pharmaceutical sector and bankrupting the companies that fund cutting-edge medical research, such lawsuits inflict staggering damage on society. They deal a one-two punch to needy patients: They deny access to many treatments that have already been developed, and they prevent the future development of drugs that might become available in a friendlier investment environment. Will no one hold trial lawyers liable for this catastrophic harm?