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Posts Tagged ‘Upjohn’

Not to worry, it will only take a few hours for them to make this money back.

Pfizer Inc. must pay about $75 million in punitive damages to an Illinois woman who developed cancer after taking one of the drugmaker’s menopause treatments, people familiar with a sealed verdict in the case said.

A Philadelphia jury ordered Pfizer’s Wyeth unit on Oct. 26 to pay the bad-conduct award, which is about 20 times larger than the $3.7 million in actual damages the panel awarded to Connie Barton over her use of Wyeth’s Prempro menopause drug, according to people with direct knowledge of the verdict.

A judge ordered Barton’s punitive-damage award sealed at Wyeth’s request until the trial of another Prempro lawsuit in the same courthouse is completed. Lawyers in that case say jurors won’t start deliberating on that suit’s claims for another three weeks.

“The company believes there is no basis in fact or in law for the jury verdict in the Barton case,” Pfizer spokesman Christopher Loder said. “We plan to ask the judge to reject both the compensatory and punitive awards. We anticipate that if the judge doesn’t grant the company a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, we will appeal.”

Loder said he couldn’t comment on the amount of the punitive damages verdict because of a court order banning disclosure of it while a related trial is in progress.

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