One of Britain's leading QCs warned last night of a "serious risk" that people injured by faulty drugs will no longer be able to mount compensation claims in the British courts. Lord Brennan QC, a former chairman of the Bar and a deputy high court judge, spoke after the Guardian discovered that more than 500 people who had had strokes or heart attacks following treatment with the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx had lost an appeal against the refusal to pay them legal aid.

Martyn Day, a solicitor who acts for 200 claimants, said they appeared to be caught in a legal limbo barring them from seeking compensation. They have no funding to sue in Britain after being refused legal aid and they have also been denied the insurance they would need to pursue a claim on a no-win, no-fee basis.

Mr Day said the case was the strongest against a pharmaceutical company in 10 years, because it was supported by "gold standard" scientific studies showing a significant risk of adverse effects compared with similar drugs.

He said the failure to get funding for the case spelled "the end of litigation against drug companies in the UK," adding: "If this case can't get into the courts here, then I don't know what will. There's a real chance that we will simply end up in some mid-Atlantic limbo land where we can't get funding here, we can't get the cases going here, and at the same time we get thrown out in the US. So British people end up with no justice, no recompense, whereas in the States there's a very strong feeling that Merck will settle these cases."

Lord Brennan, who has acted for claimants in some of the biggest drug cases, said there was "a serious risk" that compensation claims against drug firms could no longer be brought in Britain because of restrictions on funding. He called for consideration of US-style contingent fees where lawyers get a share of the damages, rather than just extra fees, as UK lawyers get if they win a case on a no-win no-fee basis.

One claimant, Vivian Wyatt, 57, of Highbridge, near Bridgewater, Somerset, said she took Vioxx for four years until her GP told her not to take it any more because of liver damage. A week later she had a heart attack. Now disabled, she said: "The only way I could fund it [the case] is by selling my house and all my possessions."

Mr Day said legal aid for such cases had been "massively cut back" in recent years. No-win, no-fee arrangements - known as conditional fee agreements - had been meant to take up the slack. But insurance against losing and having to pay the drug company's costs was hard to get and prohibitively expensive. Some insurers will defer the premium and charge only if, and after, the case is won. In the Vioxx case, the costs of losing are estimated at £5m, and insurers will agree to defer the premium only up to £250,000 of costs.

Some UK claimants are trying to sue in the U.S. but Mr Day said an attempt by Merck Inc, the drug's US-based maker, to try to get foreign claims thrown out had a "real" chance of success.

Merck faces about 7,000 lawsuits over Vioxx, prescribed mainly for arthritis, which it withdrew from the market last year when a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack or stroke if taken for 18 months or longer. Three months ago a jury awarded $253m (£147m) to a widow whose husband, a Vioxx user, died. But the firm won a second case, when the jury ruled it gave adequate warnings. A third US trial starts today. Merck said in a statement: "We believe we have meritorious defences and intend to vigorously defend individual Vioxx cases one by one."

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