Pfizer to pay US$113m over hormone replacement drug
Two separate cases have resulted in a combined award of almost US$113m against pharmaceutical firm Pfizer, after its hormone replacement drug Prempro (premarin) was implicated in breast cancer.
The awards came after juries in the two cases found Wyeth - now owned by Pfizer, wilfully hid evidence of a cancer link with the drug.
In the first case, heard in Philadelphia, the jury awarded Donna Kendall US$28m in punitive damages, whose breast cancer was found after she had taken hormone drugs for 11 years. The jury had already given her US$6.3m in compensatory damages.
The award came a month after a previous case, also heard in Philadelphia, which saw a jury award Connie Barton US$75m in punitive damages and US$3.7m in compensatory damages. The award in the Barton case was revealed the same day as the verdict in the Kendall trial.
During the trial jurors heard testimony that Wyeth paid consultants and ghost-writers of medical journal articles to play down concerns about breast cancer linked to its hormone replacement drugs. Jurors also heard that the company did not study known risks.
Annual sales of premarin reached US$2bn before a 2002 Women's Health Initiative study, sponsored by the US National Institute of Health, found that women using the drugs had a higher risk of breast cancer. Following the revelation, the FDA ordered a black-box warning highlighting the risks, although it did not call for the drug to be removed from the market.
Pfizer inherited hundreds of personal injury lawsuits involving the drug after its US$67bn acquisition of Wyeth.
Pfizer said it was disappointed by the verdicts in this and the earlier case, and plans to appeal.
"The company believes that neither the awards of punitive damages nor the liability verdicts were supported by the evidence or the law. We plan to challenge both decisions in post-trial motions and, if necessary, through an appeal," Pfizer spokesman Chris Loder said in a statement.
"The company stands by its belief that its subsidiaries acted responsibly by providing proper and accurate warnings regarding the hormone therapy medicines' risks," he added.
About 35 premarin cases have been set for trial so far, and 19 have been thrown out by judges or withdrawn by plaintiffs, according to Pfizer. The company has also settled at least five other cases concerning the drug out of court.
