Like to sit in cold courtrooms? Listen to lawyers toss out medical minutiae and throw verbal darts at one another? Fascinated by inside views of the way drugmakers do business?

You can see all this and more simply by shuttling over to a New Jersey state court in Atlantic City to watch the latest Vioxx trial. But did you know that some people sitting on those lonely benches get paid $125 a day as a shadow juror?

The high-stakes Vioxx litigation has prompted both sides to judicously study jury reactions to every bit of evidence, every witness and every narrative in hopes of gaining valuable feedback that will provide an upper hand.

There was a neat story about this in The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, which notes that neither Merck nor Mark Lanier, the high-profile plaintiffs’ lawyer, would acknowledge paying for such insights.

[tags]Mark Lanier, Merck, Vioxx[/tags]