Hormone Replacement Therapy Lawsuits Reinstated on Appeal

More than 100 hormone replacement therapy lawsuits filed by women who developed breast cancer after using Prempro and other drugs have been reinstated by a federal appeals court, which ruled that the cases were wrongly thrown out by a lower court in 2008.

The ruling was issued earlier this week by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, delivering the latest of a string of legal blows to Pfizer over its Prempro hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drug. The appeals court ruled that a district court in 2008 never had the authority to dismiss the lawsuits, because they belonged in state court instead of federal court. The appeals court also reversed the dismissal of a number of cases that were originally dismissed because they duplicated lawsuits pending in California.

Late last year, Pfizer was hit with a combined $103 million in punitive damages over Prempro by two Philadelphia juries who found that their Wyeth subsidiary purposefully hid Prempro’s breast cancer risk.

Hormone replacement therapy involves the use of hormones and progestins to artificially boost hormone levels in women undergoing menopause due to surgery or in postmenopausal women, to provide relief from symptoms such as hot flashes, irregular menstruation or weight gain.

In 2002 the National Institutes of Health released the results of studies that found women receiving HRT were at higher risk of breast cancer, strokes and heart attacks. The studies, part of the Women’s Health Initiative, sparked most of the hormone replacement therapy breast cancer lawsuits currently pending throughout the country.

The plaintiffs in the reinstated cases allege that the district court ruling in 2008 did not provide them with a reasonable opportunity to have their cases heard, and said that the judge abused his authority by not allowing the cases to be stayed until the results of the California lawsuits.

There are currently about 9,000 Prempro lawsuits pending against Pfizer. All of the lawsuits claim that inadequate warnings were provided about the risk of invasive breast cancer from the HRT drugs and that the drug makers intentionally hid the cancer risk from women.

New hormone replacement breast cancer lawsuits continue to be filed on behalf women. On December 29, the family of Delores Ann Spann Whatley filed suit in the Tyler Division of the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that HRT drugs from Wyeth, Pfizer, Pharmacia and Upjohn Co. and Watson Pharmaceuticals caused her death. Whatley’s family say that the defendants acted with malice and reckless disregard, and are seeking punitive damages on top of compensatory damages. The case was originally filed in November in the 114th Judicial District Court of Smith County, but was removed and refiled in Tyler Division weeks later.