By JOHN CURRAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Plaintiff John McDarby's wife, Irma, right, is congratulated by one of their lawyers, Dara G. Hegar, Tuesday, April 11, 2006, in Atlantic City, N.J., following the jury verdict in a trial against Merck & Co., the maker of Vioxx, which McDarby says caused him to have a heart attack. The Atlantic City jury awarded McDarby $9 million in punitive damages, ruling Merck failed to warn of risks of Vioxx use. The damages are in addition to $4.5 million already awarded to the 77-year-old McDarby. (AP Photo/Jose F. Moreno, Pool)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- For five weeks, Irma McDarby showed up daily in Courtroom 3A - sitting in the front row, listening to the lawyers and the doctors and the expert witnesses talk about her husband's angiogram, his broken hips, his diabetes.
On the days her husband felt up to it, she pushed his wheelchair, helped him in and out of the hard wooden courtroom seats and took him to the bathroom.
She was used to it.
Ever since 77-year-old John McDarby suffered a heart attack and collapsed in the living room of their Park Ridge home two years ago, she had been his constant caregiver, spelled only by once-a-week visits from an aide because the couple can't afford more frequent care.
On Tuesday, a jury said the couple should receive the much-needed money, awarding $9 million in punitive damages to John McDarby after finding that Merck & Co.'s arthritis drug Vioxx contributed to his heart attack. Combined with other damages awarded last week, Merck has been ordered to pay $13.5 million to the couple.
Appeals by the company will likely delay the payment, said Robert Gordon, one of the McDarbys' lawyers.
John McDarby, a retired insurance agent, suffered the heart attack in April 2004 after taking Vioxx for four years because of arthritis pain in his hands and a knee. As he collapsed, his body twisted, his right hip fracturing before he hit the floor.
The incident led to a sharp decline for the man Irma McDarby married twice - they were divorced in 1982 and remarried in 1989. He spent about three months in the hospital and in rehabilitation, and later fell and broke his left hip.
Now, he requires constant care. To his wife, who struggles to lift him and bathe him and dress him, that's the godsend of the verdict.
"I feel justified," she said. "Now, my husband John, the father of my five children, will get the care that he so desperately needs."
But Irma McDarby, a petite, soft-spoken 70-year-old who works as church secretary, also said there was more at stake than just the money that she may wait a long time to see.
"It's the integrity that's involved, the morality that's involved," she said about Merck outside the courthouse after Tuesday's verdict. "All these things are important."
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