In the same week that Wyeth's quarterly earnings were posted and it was announced that Premarin sales rose 15 percent to $276 million, another story shared that Wyeth has to pay the largest personal injury award in Nevada history.

http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/04/wyeth-acted-in-bad-faith-in-prempro-case/

Wyeth Acted In ‘Bad Faith’ In Prempro Case

A Nevada judge has ordered Wyeth to post a $58 million bond and pay $1.6 million in attorney fees for acting in ‘bad faith’ during settlement talks with lawyers for three women who sued the drugmaker over charges the Prempro hormone replacement treatment caused their breast cancer, according to The North Lake Tahoe Bonanza.

You may recall that, two months ago, Washoe County District Judge Robert Perry slashed a $134 million jury award to the three women after finding the damages were excessive, and reduced the award to $58 million - $23 million in compensatory and $35 million in punitive. Nonetheless, the amount was the largest personal injury award in Nevada history and is the largest award to date against Wyeth, which faces about 5,300 HRT lawsuits across the country in state and federal courts.

Now, though, Perry has ordered Wyeth to pay more than $1.6 million in fees to the lawyers who represented Arlene Rowatt, 67, Pamela Forrester, 65, and Jeraldine Scofield, 74, at trial last September. The judge said the drugmaker’s refusal to accept the plaintiffs’ offer of a $499,000 settlement each amounted to “bad faith.” And he also ordered Wyeth to post the $58 million bond while an appeal is pursued. Wyeth had sought a waiver of the bond requirement, contending its size made the bond unnecessary, the paper writes.

“The court finds that although Wyeth’s refusal of the plaintiff’s Offer of Judgment may not have been grossly unreasonable, it was in bad faith,” Perry wrote, according to court documents cited by the paper. “Although Wyeth had prevailed in some similar cases brought in other areas of the country, it had also settled several cases, and even lost cases in which the jury verdict exceeded $1 million. Because Wyeth responded to the plaintiffs with offers of zero, it is apparent to the court that Wyeth decided to gamble that the jury would return a defense verdict.”


Geoffrey White, a partner in White Meany & Wetherall, which represented the women, tells the paper that “posting bond helps prevent corporate shenanigans after the (Nevada) supreme court appeal process.”

In the original award, the paper writes that Perry ruled “there was substantial evidence from which the jury could conclude that Wyeth knew that its product could cause breast cancer, that it intentionally failed to conduct adequate tests, that it financed and manipulated scientific studies and sponsored articles in professional and scientific journals that deliberately minimized the risk of cancer while over-promoting certain benefits and citing others which it knew to be unsubstantiated…The evidence (at trial) also supported the conclusion that Wyeth intentionally made similar misstatements and misleading assertions in its marketing to physicians and its advertising directed to the public.”

All three women began taking the Wyeth drug Premarin, as well as a related drug Progestin, more than 10 years ago. They later switched to Prempro, a Wyeth product that combined Premarin and Progesterone in the same pill. They stopped taking the drugs once their breast cancers were diagnosed. Scofield and Rowatt both required mastectomies to remove their breasts, according to the paper.

Wyeth did not respond to requests for comment by the paper. We are awaiting a reply, which we will post if, and when, one is received.