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Breast cancer after used hormonal drugs
Breast cancer after used hormonal drugs
By DUFF WILSON, New York Times
Published: November 23, 2009
Pfizer has been ordered to pay a total of $103 million in punitive damages to two women who were found to have breast cancer after they used hormonal drugs, state court officials in Philadelphia said Monday.A jury reached a $28 million judgment in one of the women’s cases on Monday, while a judge unsealed a month-old $75 million judgment in the other case. The earlier finding of punitive damages had been sealed to avoid prejudicing the second jury in the same courthouse.At least 1,500 other product liability suits have been filed over the hormone drugs in the Philadelphia court, lawyers said, and a total of more than 10,000 around the country.
In stock trading Monday, Pfizer shares were up 17 cents, closing at $18.53, near their 52-week high. But plaintiffs’ lawyers say they are winning the overall legal battle over hormone therapy, contending they have secured financial settlements for undisclosed amounts in at least 10 other cases before the suits went to trial. The issue has become Pfizer’s by dint of its acquisition of two companies — Pharmacia in 2003 and Wyeth in January — that marketed the drugs as a standard, long-term hormone treatment for menopausal women, until medical evidence emerged indicating that such therapy raised women’s risk of breast cancer.
The Philadelphia cases were filed there because Wyeth’s headquarters had been there. Esther E. Berezofsky, a lawyer for one of the women who won the awards in Philadelphia said Monday, “This is just the tip of the iceberg.” She said that in cases that had reached jury judgments, women with breast cancer had won damages in 10 of the 12 hormone drug cases, although many are on appeal. In that decision, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit overturned an award of $27 million for an Arkansas woman, citing improper testimony by an expert witness. But the court ordered a new trial on punitive damages. The judges’ ruling said “there was sufficient evidence upon which a jury could conclude that Wyeth acted with reckless disregard to the risk of injury.”
Christopher Loder, a Pfizer spokesman, said the company filed a motion last week asking the panel or the full appellate court to review that decision. The hormonal drugs are still used by millions of women to treat symptoms of menopause. But after estrogen was linked to breast cancer in 2002 by a federally financed research effort, the Women’s Health Initiative, the Food and Drug Administration added black-box warnings to the drugs’ labels, cautioning that they be used at the smallest possible doses for the shortest possible time.
Sales of the drugs exceeded $2 billion a year before the 2002 study and then plunged, although they have regained some ground. Last year, $1.4 billion in estrogen drugs and nearly $400 million in estrogen-progestin combinations were sold in the United States, according to IMS Health, an industry consulting firm.Wyeth makes Premarin, which contains estrogen, and Prempro, a combination of estrogen and progestin. Pharmacia and Upjohn made Provera, a progestin hormone sometimes combined with estrogen.
On Monday a jury in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court awarded $28 million in punitive damages to Donna Kendall of Decatur, Ill., whose breast cancer was found after she had taken hormone drugs for 11 years. The jury had already given her $6.3 million in compensatory damages. Punitive damages in Pennsylvania require a finding of “wanton and reckless” conduct. The jurors heard testimony that Wyeth paid consultants and ghostwriters of medical journal articles to play down concerns about breast cancer, as well as testimony that Pharmacia did not study known risks. The punitive award was split $16 million for Wyeth and $12 million for Pharmacia.
After that ruling was made public, Sandra M. Moss, the judge who leads the complex litigation program at the Philadelphia court, unsealed a $75 million punitive damage award from last month in a case brought against Wyeth by Connie Barton of Peoria, Ill. She was also awarded $3.7 million in compensatory damages previously made public. Mr. Anderson, the Bernstein analyst, said it was significant and in Pfizer’s favor that the hormone products were still F.D.A.-approved. Other products whose makers have paid many billions of dollars in damages were withdrawn from the market, he said, citing Merck’s Vioxx, a painkiller that was linked to heart attacks and strokes, and American Home Products’ fen-phen, an antiobesity drug linked to heart and lung risks.
