New Orleans, Aug. 17 (Reuters): A federal jury today found that Merck & Co. Inc. was negligent and knowingly made misrepresentations about its withdrawn pain medicine Vioxx, and awarded $51 million to the plaintiff.

The New Orleans jury, in the second federal trial involving a Vioxx product-liability lawsuit, found that Merck had knowingly misrepresented or failed to disclose a material fact to the plaintiff's physicians and that doctors in the case and the plaintiff himself were not at fault.

The plaintiff, Gerald Barnett, a 62-year-old retired FBI agent who had a heart attack in 2002 after taking Vioxx for 31 months, was awarded $50 million in damages.