“Whenever Merck was up there [on the witness stand], it was like wah, wah, wah,” juror John Ostrom told The Wall Street Journal, imitating the drone of Charlie Brown’s teacher after dunning Merck & Co. for $253 million in damages. He was describing his own reason for finding that Merck’s Vioxx had killed a 59-year-old man, even though the trial established that the man had died of unrelated causes. Ostrom’s fellow jurors don’t seem much cleverer. Marsha Robbins prayed to be made forewoman, and in an irrefutable proof of God’s bounty ended up getting the position uncontested. Lorraine Blas noted in her questionnaire that she’s a fan of The Oprah Winfrey Show, and when plaintiff’s lawyer Mark Lanier in his closing arguments suggested a guilty verdict might land the jury a spot on Oprah’s show, Blas, rather than being creeped out by this used car salesman’s trick, laughed and enjoyed the lawyer’s attention. And consider juror/medical genius Matthew Pallardy, who, despite evidence to the contrary, “kind of figured” the victim suffered from a Vioxx-related blood clot, “even if it went away real quick.” The irony, here, is that this example of injustice in the form of gross incompetence and dereliction...