Quoted from http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-02-08/pfizer-must-pay-1-6-million-drug-damages-judges-say.html
Pfizer Must Pay $1.6 Million Drug Damages, Judges Say
February 08, 2011, 2:28 PM ESTBy Jef Feeley and Phil Milford
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drugmaker, must pay $1.68 million plus undisclosed punitive damages to a woman who blamed her breast cancer on the Prempro menopause drug, after an appeals court reinstated a verdict.
In 2007, a trial jury in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas awarded Mary Daniel and her family $1,681,650 from Pfizer’s Wyeth unit, plus punitive damages that the court kept secret. A judge later overturned the verdict. Daniel filed an appeal with the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.
The three-judge panel ruled yesterday that “contrary to Wyeth’s contentions,” no “fraud on the court took place here and a new trial should not have been granted” by the lower court.
“The company disputes the fairness of the previous trial and the appropriateness of the jury’s verdict. We are considering all our legal options,” Christopher Loder, a spokesman for New York-based Pfizer, said today in an e-mailed statement.
Annual sales of Wyeth’s hormone-replacement drugs once topped $2 billion before the Women’s Health Initiative study, sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, suggested that women on the therapy had a 24 percent higher risk of breast cancer.
Pfizer rose 4 cents to $19.08 at 2:07 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
The case is Daniel v. Wyeth, 040602368, Court of Common Pleas (Philadelphia).