Indeed, Merck is in serious trouble. It has the benefit of the best lawyers and trial consultants money can buy: Gerry Lowry from Houston’s Fulbright & Jaworski and David Kiernan, a lawyer/surgeon from Washington D.C’s Williams & Connolly. The team also includes Dr. Pat Hastings, a trial psychologist from R and D Strategic Solutions. In addition to its advice, R and D is also providing Merck’s “shadow jury,” which stations locals in the gallery to take notes and be interviewed each evening in an effort to gauge juror reaction. Yet, despite all this top drawer legal power, Merck’s defense seems to be flatlining at this point. Merck’s witnesses are poorly prepared and/or astonishingly arrogant. If there were any doubt about this, Dr. Alan Nies, Merck’s former SVP of Clinical Research erased that in his astonishingly arrogant responses on cross-examination. Could Merck be intentionally putting on a minimal defense in order to use an “outrageous” jury verdict as a platform to garner support for so-called “tort reform” federal legislation limiting recoveries in all similar current and future drug cases?