Quoted from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a5wbl9aOGK9E
Pfizer Wins 93% Cut in Prempro Punitive-Damages Award
By Jef Feeley and Sophia Pearson
Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- A Pfizer Inc. unit persuaded a Pennsylvania state court judge to slash by 93 percent a $75 million punitive-damages award to a woman who blamed the company’s menopause drugs for her breast cancer.
Judge Norman Ackerman in Philadelphia reduced the award to Connie Barton to $5.6 million after finding it was excessive. Jurors also awarded Barton $3.7 million in compensatory damages in her lawsuit against Pfizer’s Wyeth unit over the hormone- replacement drug Prempro. Ackerman left that award undisturbed in his post-trial ruling, according to court docket entries.
“We continue to believe that there is no basis in fact or law for either the liability verdict or punitive award in this case,” Chris Loder, Pfizer’s spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement. The company will appeal Ackerman’s ruling, he added.
Barton’s suit was among more than 8,000 against Wyeth and another Pfizer unit over the company’s menopause drugs, according to a Wyeth regulatory filing last year. More than 6 million women took the pills to treat symptoms such as hot flashes and mood swings before a 2002 study highlighted the drugs’ links to cancer.