Wyeth Pharmaceuticals 2-3 in First of Thousands of Product Liability Cases Against Its Hormone-Replacement Drugs Prempro and Premarin

The verdict has been reached in. New Jersey-based Wyeth Pharmaceutical has suffered its third loss in five trials. The award included $2.4 million in compensatory damages for the plaintiff, Mrs. Jennie Nelson, and $600,000 for her husband, Lawrence Nelson. The judge in the case had ruled out punitive damages.

Mrs. Nelson's lawsuit was one of about 5,000 against Wyeth over its hormone-replacement drugs, including Prempro and Premarin. Nelson was among 6 million women who took the pills to treat menopause symptoms such as hot flashes and mood swings before a 2002 study curbed sales.

A Women's Health Initiative study, sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, concluded that women who received a combination of estrogen and progestin in Prempro had a 24% higher risk of getting invasive breast cancer than those who did not.

Mrs. Nelson began using Prempro in 1995 and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001. A Philadelphia jury awarded Nelson and her husband $1.5 million in damages in October but the judge in the case declared a mistrial, erasing the award, after Wyeth accused a juror of misconduct.

Wyeth's lawyers denied the company engaged in any wrongdoing and blamed Nelson's cancer on other factors, including her family history. They told jurors the cancer warnings included on the drug's label were sanctioned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In a success for Wyeth, on Feb 15. a federal jury in Little Rock, Arkansas, rejected Helene Rush's, an Arkansas woman, claims that Prempro caused her breast cancer. Wyeth had previously won the first hormone-replacement case to come to trial in August in that same court.

Another Philadelphia jury awarded another Arkansas woman and her husband $1.5 million in damages over her Prempro claims in January. A judge in that case also refused to allow jurors to award punitive damages.

The lawsuits pending against Wyeth accuse the company of minimizing the risks involved with the drugs. This was allowed to be presented in the Philadelphia court where Suggs told the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury that Wyeth misled women about Prempro's cancer risk by putting fuzzy warnings on the drug's label.

In the Arkansas case, Rush's lead attorney, Les Weisbrod of Dallas, said he thought the case had been hampered because he was barred from introducing evidence about Wyeth's consumer advertising and promotional activities with doctors.

Both drugs remain on the market and carry the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and both continue to be prescribed annually to hundreds of thousands of women to alleviate symptoms of menopause.

Wyeth officials said in January that sales of its hormone-replacement drugs climbed to more than $1 billion in 2006. Sales had topped $2 billion, making them Wyeth's best-selling products.

References
Staff Writer. (2007 Feb 21). Wyeth to Pay $3 Million in Cancer Suit. Associated Press/NY Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/business/21wyeth.html
Staff Writer. (2007 Feb 16).Jury sides with Wyeth in suit over hormone replacement drugs. Associated Press/International Herald Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/16/business/drug.php