Vioxx class action certification ruling [SC NJ AD] News
Vioxx class action certification ruling [SC NJ AD]

International Union of Operating Engineers Local #68 Welfare Fund v. Merck & Co., Inc., Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division, March 31, 2006 [upholding a trial court decision to certify a nationwide class of plaintiffs suing the drug maker Merck for damages relating to its withdrawn drug Vioxx].

Read the full text of the opinion. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

THIS DAY @ LAW

First US life insurance company incorporated

On January 11, 1759, America's first life insurance company was incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers was established by Presbyterians to support the families of their ministers. In 1988, the company's name was changed to the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund. The company later became Covenant Life Insurance Company before being acquired by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in 2002. Read a history of the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund from the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

Treaty ended Anglo-American claims, courts in China

On January 11, 1943, the United States and Great Britain relinquished by treaty their extraterritorial claims in China. This abandonment effectively ended the jurisdiction of the extraterritorial United States Court for China (established 1906) and the British Supreme Court in China. Read more about the United States Court for China, which one scholar has called "probably the strangest federal tribunal ever constituted by Congress," in a short online history of the US Ninth Circuit.