Wyeth appealing two hormone verdicts

Another Prempro judgment, another appeal. An Arkansas jury yesterday ordered Wyeth and Upjohn to pay more than $27 million in punitive damages; that would allocate out to $19.4 million from Wyeth and $7.8 million from Upjohn, a Pfizer unit. That's on top of $2.75 million in compensatory damages. The jury found that the plaintiff developed breast cancer from taking the companies' hormone-replacement therapies.

By late afternoon, Wyeth had announced it plans to appeal the jury verdicts. "There is no basis in fact or law for this award...We will pursue several post-trial motions and will ultimately appeal the entire case if necessary," Wyeth's lawyer said.

Meanwhile, Wyeth is also appealing a Nevada court's ruling in a similar hormone-replacement case. A jury awarded three women $134 million in the case; though the judge then cut that award to $58 million, the company filed an appeal, saying that the verdict itself was "irreparably flawed and fraught with error." The company faces thousands of other hormone-replacement cases across the country.

- see the brief in the Wall Street Journal
- read the CNN Money report about the Arkansas appeal
- check out the Nevada coverage in the Reno Gazette-Journal

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