Pfizer Must Pay $10.4 Million In Prempro Lawsuit, Court Rules
Pfizer Inc. must pay $10.4 million in damages to a woman who blamed the company’s Prempro menopause drug for her breast cancer, an appeals court said.
Jurors properly awarded Audrey Singleton, who sued Pfizer’s Wyeth unit over Prempro, compensatory and punitive damages over the company’s marketing of the drug, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled yesterday. Singleton’s lawyers alleged that Wyeth hid the drug’s health risks and a jury awarded her damages on those claims in 2010.
“Wyeth’s concerted effort to misdirect physicians from the dangers of Prempro illustrates the consciousness that its conduct was not at all reasonable,” the three-judge panel said in upholding the jury’s findings.
More than 6 million women took Prempro and related menopause drugs to treat symptoms including hot flashes and mood swings before a 2002 study highlighted their links to cancer. At one point, Pfizer (PFE) and its units faced more than 10,000 lawsuits over the medications.
Until 1995, many patients combined Premarin, Wyeth’s estrogen-based drug, with progestin-laden Provera, made by Pfizer’s Pharmacia & Upjohn unit. Wyeth combined the two hormones in Prempro. The drugs are still on the market.
Chris Loder, a spokesman for New York-based Pfizer, couldn’t immediately comment yesteday on whether the drugmaker would ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to review the award to Singleton.
‘Deliberate Disregard’
Esther Berezofsky, one of Singleton’s lawyers, said she was pleased the intermediate appellate court backed the jury’s finding that Wyeth officials misled patients and doctors about Prempro’s risks.
“The court affirmed that the evidence established Wyeth’s conscious and deliberate disregard for the cancer risk associated with Prempro,” Berezofsky said in an e-mailed statement.
The ruling comes as Pfizer officials are working to settle lawsuits over the menopause drugs. The drugmaker has now settled about 60 percent of the cases over the medicines and paid out $896 million, executives said in May in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has set aside an additional $330 million to resolve the remaining cases, according to the filing.
Singleton, a mother of three from Alabama, began taking Prempro in August 1997, according to court filings. The results of a mammogram at that time were normal, her lawyers said during the trial. She stopped taking the drug in January 2004 after her breast cancer diagnosis.
She sued Wyeth, later acquired by Pfizer, in state court in Pennsylvania where the company has extensive operations. A Philadelphia jury awarded her $3.4 million in compensatory damages and $6 million in punitive damages in February 2010. The judge in the case later added almost $1 million in interest to the verdict.
The appellate panel found Singleton’s lawyers presented enough evidence that Wyeth officials downplayed or hid Prempro’s health risks to justify the compensatory award.
Jurors also properly weighed whether Wyeth should be held liable for punitive damages and reasonably concluded “Wyeth’s actions were not justifiable,” the judges said in a 30-page decision.
“There is nothing in the record that illustrates the $6 million punitive damages award was grossly excessively as to shock our sense of justice,” the panel wrote.
The case is Singleton v. Wyeth Inc., 050102885, Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia).
To contact the reporter on this story: Jef Feeley in Philadelphia at jfeeley@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net
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Saturday, 21 July 2012
Pennsylvania Superior Court-Pennsylvania Supreme Court-Compensatory Damages-Punitive Damages
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Hormone Replacement Therapies-Estrogen Treatments-Brandon, Manitoba-Hormone Therapy
Pfizer ($PFE), which faces thousands of lawsuits over hormone replacement therapies, will cut about 40% of the workforce at a Canadian plant where one of them is made.The company says that by the end of next year it will eliminate 50 of 130 jobs at a plant in Brandon, Manitoba, where it processes conjugated estrogen from pregnant mares' urine (PMU), reports the Alberta Farmer Express. It uses the product to manufacture Premarin, a hormone replacement treatment originally developed by Wyeth, which Pfizer acquired in 2009.Pfizer told the publication that it must always be looking for "efficiencies and cost reductions by using our resources and technology more effectively." It says the restructuring will not affect its network of about 25 horse ranchers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, from which it buys the raw PMU.According to Pfizer's website, Premarin is shipped globally and accounts for more than two-thirds of all estrogen prescriptions in the U.S. It says more Premarin is exported from Canada "than any other single pharmaceutical product." It doesn't mention the 10,000 lawsuits it has been fighting by women who claim that estrogen treatments were tied to their breast cancer.The company in December said it had settled about 5,000 of 10,000 lawsuits brought on behalf of women who had taken its hormone therapy drugs Premarin, Provera and Prempro. It said in a financial filing that it had set aside about $840 million to help settle claims. That disclosure came on the heels of a settlement it reached with three women who had been awarded more than $70 million from a jury who agreed that Pfizer's estrogen treatments contributed to their getting breast cancer.The Brandon plant was built in the 1960s and Pfizer inherited it as part of its 2009 acquisition of Wyeth. The Express says Wyeth reduced its network of PMU suppliers by half about 10 years ago after health studies identified the cancer risks associated with estrogen therapy and demand for the drugs fell off.- read the Alberta Farmer Express storyRelated Articles:
Pfizer settles hormone-drug suit after $72.6M jury award
For Pfizer, 5,000 lawsuits resolved, 5,000 to go read more..