Here's a jaw dropper from this morning's Wall Street Journal.

Investors are suing Merck for failing to disclose Vioxx's risks until 2004. The case has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, Merck's lawyers told the high court justices that the suit was invalid because two-year statute of limitations on investor lawsuits had run out by 2004 because the drug's risks were known as early as 2001.

What happened in 2001? Merck-funded researchers published the original clinical trial showing a fourfold increase in heart attack risk from the pain reliever. At the time, those results were explained away by Merck and the researchers with the suggestion that the comparison drug was cardioprotective.

In other words, the risks should have been known to investors even though Merck was denying those risks existed.

"You can't have it both ways," Justice Anthony Kennedy said.