Quoted from http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202463820665
Pa. Supreme Court Refuses to Reconsider HRT Case
Amaris Elliott-Engel
The Legal Intelligencer
July 23, 2010
Despite a plaintiff's argument that upholding the dismissal of the first hormone replacement therapy tort case to reach Pennsylvania's highest court conflicts with succeeding case law in Pennsylvania's HRT litigation, the state Supreme Court is leaving intact a judgment notwithstanding the verdict in favor of drugmaker Wyeth.
A per curiam order was entered by the Supreme Court last month in response to the plaintiff's petition for reconsideration in Nelson v. Wyeth. The Supreme Court first denied the plaintiff's petition for allowance of appeal March 30.
The court's decisions affirm a trial court finding that plaintiff Jennie Nelson, of Ohio, failed to show proximate causation under the learned intermediary doctrine between her doctor's prescription of a Wyeth-made hormonal drug and her breast cancer.
The female plaintiffs in the HRT litigation allege their breast cancer was caused by Wyeth's and other drug makers' failure to adequately warn of the risks of breast cancer from hormonal drugs used to treat menopausal symptoms.
Plaintiffs had argued that the non-precedential disposition of Nelson appeared to conflict with the Superior Court's precedential decision in Simon v. Wyeth. That argument, however, did not move the Supreme Court to take a second look at the decision.
Plaintiffs attorneys also sought reconsideration on the fact that Pennsylvania law was applied to Nelson's liability claims, when the law of plaintiffs' home states, not Pennsylvania law, has been applied in succeeding HRT cases that have gone to trial.