Jury awards $28M in hormone drug case

Posted: 7:16 pm Mon, November 23, 2009
By Daily Record Staff

A jury on Monday awarded $28 million in punitive damages to a woman who contracted breast cancer after taking hormone replacement drugs for 11 years.

The awards are in addition to the $6.3 million in compensatory damages the Philadelphia jury awarded Donna Kendall on Friday.  The punitive damages are split between Wyeth and Upjohn Co., two divisions of Pfizer Inc.

“These companies acted with conscious disregard toward patients and physicians,” said Robert K. Jenner, of Janet, Jenner & Suggs in Pikesville. The firm was part of Kendall’s trial team.

Jenner is also co-counsel for Connie Barton, whose award of $75 million in punitive damages was made public in court on Monday. A jury in the same court had reached that decision several weeks ago, but the amount was kept sealed out fear it would affect the Kendall award being heard in the same courthouse. (Barton also received $3.7 million in compensatory damages.)

A third punitive verdict that was awarded in 2007, in Daniel v. Wyeth, was scheduled to be released Monday as well.  However, Wyeth obtained emergency relief to keep it sealed, according to Jenner’s office.

The Kendall verdict brings to more than $165 million the total awarded in such cases since they began going to trial in 2006. Out of 12 cases tried, 10 have resulted in monetary verdicts, Jenner’s office said in a news release.

The women accused Wyeth and Upjohn of misleading doctors and patients about the link between hormone therapy drugs and cancer prior to 2002.

More than 6 million women have taken hormone-replacement medicines to treat menopause symptoms including hot flashes, night sweats and mood swings.

Until 1995, many patients combined Premarin, Wyeth’s estrogen-based drug, with progestin-laden Provera, made by Upjohn. Wyeth later combined the two hormones in Prempro. The drugs are still on the market.

Wyeth, based in Madison, N.J., was acquired by New York drugmaker Pfizer Inc. for $68 billion on Oct. 15. A spokesman for Pfizer said the company will challenge both verdicts.

“We are disappointed with the verdicts in these cases,” Pfizer spokesman Chris Loder said in a statement. “The company believes that neither the awards of punitive damages nor the liability verdicts were supported by the evidence or the law.”

Kendall, 66, of Decatur, Ill., alleged that she took combination estrogen-progestin therapy years from 1991 to 2002, including the last four years on Prempro. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002.
Barton, 64, of Peoria, Ill., took Prempro for five years before her 2002 diagnosis.

The case is Kendall v. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc., 040600965, Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.

Daily Record legal affairs writer Danny Jacobs, Bloomberg News and The Associated Press contributed to this article.