A New Jersey state jury ruled that Merck had failed to provide adequate warning about the risks of its Vioxx painkiller in one of two cases decided yesterday.

In the second case, the jury ruled that the death of the plaintiff had occurred after the company had begun providing adequate warning.

The split verdict came in a trial in Atlantic City in which the cases of two men who suffered heart attacks a year apart were tried together.

In both cases, the eight-member jury ruled unanimously that Merck had committed consumer fraud by misleading doctors and patients and by intentionally suppressing, concealing or omitting information about the risks of Vioxx, which was withdrawn from the market in September 2004.

The verdict concluded the first phase of the trial, which dealt only with Merck’s behavior.

In the second phase, which starts next week, the jury will decide whether Vioxx caused the September 2001 heart attack of one plaintiff, Frederick Humeston, a 61-year-old Idaho postal worker, and what damages, if any should be awarded.

In the other case, the jury ruled that Merck had given adequate warning by the time the plaintiff, Brian Hermans of Green Bay, Wis., died of a heart attack in September 2002 at the age of 44.

As a result of that decision, the relatives of Mr. Hermans could be entitled to payments only from the consumer fraud verdict, which could be three times his cost of the Vioxx and lawyers’ fees and expenses, but not compensatory and punitive damages resulting from his death.

The difference in the two verdicts apparently reflects the revision made to the Vioxx label in April 2002 to add information about the heart risks, according to lawyers.

For Mr. Humeston, who survived his heart attack, yesterday’s verdict represented a comeback, since he had lost in his first trial against Merck in November 2005.

Judge Carol E. Higbee of Superior Court in Atlantic City, who is in charge of all the Vioxx trials in New Jersey, later threw out the verdict after new evidence came to light. In particular, The New England Journal of Medicine accused Merck of having misrepresented the data on the risks of the drug in a scientific paper in 2000.

“We were given another chance at life, and we’ve made the best of it so far,” Christopher Seeger, who represented Mr. Humeston in both trials, said after the verdict yesterday.

Before this case, Merck had won nine cases that reached jury verdicts, including the original verdict in Mr. Humeston’s case, and had lost four. The company has vowed to fight each lawsuit individually rather than settle suits collectively.

The two-phase format represents an experiment to speed trials by Judge Higbee, who is responsible for about 16,800 of more than 27,000 lawsuits filed against Merck over Vioxx.

The idea is that juries would not have to rule on Merck’s behavior for each plaintiff but could do it one time and then consider only individual circumstances of numerous plaintiffs.

W. Mark Lanier, a Houston lawyer who represented the relatives of Mr. Hermans, asked Judge Higbee to allow Mr. Hermans’s case to proceed to phase 2 anyway, arguing that Mr. Hermans had started taking Vioxx before label was changed.

The judge is expected to rule on that request on Monday.

Mr. Lanier’s request drew a sharp retort from Hope S. Freiwald, an outside lawyer for Merck with the law firm of Dechert in Princeton, N.J. “Lanier lost and he wants a do-over,” Ms. Freiwald said in an interview. “He’s telling the judge the procedure he’s been lobbying for for months and months and months as a great new way to try these cases isn’t fair anymore.”

Merck has argued against the two-phase format, saying that juries should know what a particular patient and his or her doctor knew before reaching any verdicts.

Regarding Merck’s loss in Mr. Humeston’s case, Ms. Freiwald said the more important question of whether Vioxx caused his heart attack has yet to be decided.

In a related matter, the Food and Drug Administration said it would hold an advisory committee meeting on April 12 to consider Merck’s request for approval to market Arcoxia, a pain reliever that works in the same manner as Vioxx.