Sanford Barlow LLP is proud to announce that we have signed a contract for Gold Level Partnership with the National MS Society for the 2010 BP MS150 bicycle ride from Houston, Texas, to Austin, Texas on April 17th-18th. “We support the MS Society and all of its goals,” said Shelly Sanford, partner in Sanford Barlow LLP and team captain. “I believe our team will represent well on the ride and in contributions for this great cause.” Sanford Barlow LLP is a Houston-based Law Firm that handles serious personal injury and death cases as well as cases involving economic injuries to business or governmental entities. Team Sanford Barlow LLP currently has 20 members and expects to grow stronger in number in years to come. The training schedule for Team Sanford Barlow LLP will be posted on the Sanford Barlow LLP Blog at  http://sanfordbarlow.com/blog.

Team co-captain, M. Angela Hill, will also post the training schedule at www.pedalclan.com. Sanford Barlow LLP will
provide updates and a link for donations to the National MS Society for the ride.  The Houston to Austin BP MS150 is an annual bicycle ride with some 14,000 participants. For more information on the ride please go to www.JoinTheMovementLonestar.org. For more information on Sanford Barlow LLP please go to www.sanfordbarlow.com.

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Obama administration sided with investors Monday in a U.S. Supreme Court case that examines whether shareholders of Merck & Co. ( MRK) waited too long to file securities lawsuits alleging the drug maker misrepresented the safety of painkiller drug Vioxx, which it removed from the market in 2004.

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the federal government’s lawyer at the Supreme Court, argued in a friend-of-the court brief that the lawsuits weren’t filed too late.

The brief is the latest sign that the solicitor general’s office under the Obama administration is taking a friendlier approach to investor lawsuits. In June, the office filed a legal brief supporting investors in an important high- court dispute on mutual-fund fees.

The Bush administration had sided against investors in several Supreme Court cases.

Investors are seeking billions of dollars in damages from Merck. They filed the first of several securities lawsuits against the Whitehouse Station, NJ- based drug maker in November 2003, alleging it misled them by downplaying the significance of clinical-trial results that appeared to show that patients taking Vioxx faced an increased risk of heart attack.

The investors said this alleged deception caused them to pay inflated prices for Merck’s stock.

The central issue before the Supreme Court focuses on when investors should have known that there was a possible Vioxx fraud.

Merck argued that investors should have filed their lawsuits earlier because there was an overwhelming amount of public information available by late-2001 suggesting the possibility that the company made misstatements about the safety of Vioxx.

But Merck also has said it properly informed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the scientific community about Vioxx-related data as it emerged.

A loss for Merck could eliminate one line of defense that companies use to fend off shareholder lawsuits.

The case will be argued on Nov. 30, with a decision expected by the end of June.

-By Brent Kendall, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9222; brent.kendall@ dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires
10-26-091752ET
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