Pfizer Inc. Loses Prempro Ruling, Must Pay $10.4 Million

Pfizer (PFE) (PFE) Inc. must pay $10.4 million in damages to a woman who blamed the company’s Prempro menopause drug for her breast cancer, an appeals court said. Jurors properly awarded Audrey Singleton, who sued Pfizer’s Wyeth unit over Prempro, compensatory and punitive damages for the company’s marketing of the drug, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled yesterday. Singleton’s lawyers alleged that Wyeth hid the drug’s health risks and a jury awarded her damages on those claims in 2010. “Wyeth’s concerted effort to misdirect physicians from the dangers of Prempro illustrates the consciousness that its conduct was not at all reasonable,” the three-judge panel said in upholding the jury’s findings.