Court Grants Drug Company's Motion To Set Aside Philadelphia Jury Verdict In Nelson v. Wyeth Lawsuit
(Posted by Tom Lamb at DrugInjuryWatch.com)
On May 31, 2007 Wyeth announced that the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, of the Pennsylvania state court system, had granted the pharmaceutical company's motion for post-trial relief, and entered a judgment notwithstanding the verdict in favor of Wyeth in the lawsuit Jennie Nelson v. Wyeth.
According to the Wyeth press release about the Nelson case verdict being overturned, this hormone replacement therapy (HRT) trial in Philadelphia began on January 11, 2007 before The Honorable Ricardo Jackson. While the jury hearing the evidence in the Nelson case reached a verdict in favor of the plaintiff on February 20, that verdict and the damages awarded by this jury have been overturned by the Court.
More details were provided in a May 31, 2007 Dow Jones Newswires article by Peter Loftus:
In February, a Philadelphia jury had ordered Wyeth to pay Jennie Nelson, a 67-year-old Ohio woman, $3 million in damages after finding that her use of Wyeth's PremPro hormone therapy caused invasive breast cancer, and that Wyeth failed to properly warn of the risks. It was the second trial of Nelson's case, the first having ended in a mistrial last year.
But Wyeth filed a post-trial motion for relief, arguing that Nelson's lawyers didn't present evidence that PremPro caused the breast cancer. The motion also argued that plaintiffs didn't present required medical-expert testimony that the product label for PremPro was inadequate.
This May 31 Dow Jones article reported, also, that Wyeth still faces about 5,200 products liability lawsuits in state and federal courts involving its HRT products Prempro and Premarin.