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Earnestness , prudishness , perversity , complacency , boundless optimism and bottomless despair are all indelibly linked , in our minds , to that peculiarly conflicted abstraction , the Victorian temper ; just as the works of Dickens , Eliot , Carroll , Collins , Flaubert and Wilde all embody wildly divergent visions of that fantastically malleable animal , the Victorian novel . " Plaintiffs ' lawyers are going to have second thoughts about filing cases where the Vioxx use was short-term , " said Peter Bicks , a New York defense lawyer , who does n't work for Merck.Humeston 's attorney , Chris Seeger , acknowledged that his case may have been weakened because the 60-year-old postal worker took the drug for such a short time — and by the fact that he survived . " Humeston is suing Merck & Co Inc ., the maker of Vioxx , alleging the drug caused his heart attack and ultimately lowered his quality of life.Humeston 's attorney , Chris Seeger , further alleges the drug maker ignored health risks associated with its billion-dollar moneymaker and chose to put profits above patient safety . " Scott wrote during the era that consistently preoccupies Victorian novelists ; as the examples above show , their own historical fiction is frequently set during the moment when Scott was himself inventing the genre . " They did n't say she did , either , " said Horn.The back-and-forth was one of several testy , rapid-fire exchanges in morning testimony , which at one point prompted the court stenographer to ask Superior Court Judge Carol E. Higbee to stop Tyberg and Horn from talking at the same time.Humeston , 60 , of Boise , Idaho , is one of about 6,500 former Vioxx users suing Merck over the drug , which it pulled off the market in September 2004 after long-term use was linked to increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.Horn also questioned Tyberg about his claim that stress from an ongoing probe of Humeston by U.S. Postal Service investigators helped trigger the heart attack . The federal trials were being consolidated in New Orleans , but since the hurricane the cases have been handled out of Houston temporarily .