Punitive Damage Trial in Prempro Suit to Proceed After Appeal Rejected

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Pfizer that sought to overturn a $2.7 million award for damages in a 2008 Prempro breast cancer lawsuit. 

The complaint was brought by Donna Scroggin, who established at an earlier trial that side effects of the hormone replacement therapy Prempro caused her to develop breast cancer. She was awarded $2.7 million in compensatory damages and $27 million in punitive damages against Wyeth and Upjohn, which are now both owned by Pfizer. Late last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis overturned the punitive damages award and called for a new trial, but left the $2.7 million compensatory award in place.

In a short order issued this week, the Supreme Court rejected Pfizer’s further appeal of that decision, meaning that a new punitive damage Prempro trial will move forward. The jury will not reconsider the liability or compensatory damage award, but will only decide whether punitive damages should be awarded as a result of the drug makers failure to conduct adequate studies and warn about the risk of breast cancer from Prempro.

Prempro is a hormone replacement therapy (HRT) that contains a combination of the drugs Provera and Premarin. The drug was originally developed by Wyeth, which was acquired by Pfizer last year. HRTs use 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 Scroggin’s case, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the compensatory damages award and agreed that there was sufficient evidence presented at trial to warrant submitting the question of punitive damages to the jury. However, as a result of procedural problems with some of the evidence presented during the punitive damages phase, the appeals court ordered that the $27 million punitive damage portion of the award must be tossed, and ordered a new trial to determine whether such damages are warranted and the amount.

Scroggin’s Prempro suit is one of about 9,000 pending against Pfizer’s Wyeth unit by women who claim that they developed breast cancer from the hormone replacement therapy. The cases allege that the drug maker intentionally hid the risk of breast cancer from women. Wyeth has lost five of the last six HRT lawsuits that have gone to trial, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages. The punitive damages have been awarded by juries who saw Wyeth’s behavior as reckless disregard for the risk of injury to consumers.