Pfizer (PFE) (PFE) 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 for 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.
The ruling comes as Pfizer officials are working to settle lawsuits over the menopause drugs. The drugmaker has settled about 60 percent of cases over the medicines and paid out $896 million, executives said in a May filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has set aside an additional $330 million to resolve the remaining cases.
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 and its units faced more than 10,000 lawsuits over the medications.
Many Patients
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 the company, said “the evidence in this case does not support the plaintiff’s claims,” and that the company is “evaluating its next steps.”
