Module 16 2022

02/09/2022

AHP “ Phen-Fen ” Litigation

The Philadelphia Inquirer 22 November 1999 In mass litigation, the serious cases can get lost

Financial Times 4 April 2002 Wyeth bullish on prospects for growth … last October the company again increased its litigation reserves to cover payments over diet drugs that were linked to serious heart side-effects. That took reserves over $13bn, several times more than the $3.75 bn Wyeth expected to pay when it first announced in 1999 a resolution of a class action over the fen-phen diet drug cocktail.

…American Home agreed to a $3.75 billion settlement in the mass litigation in October of this year…

…in 1995, the drug's label cited only four reports of PPH among users … According to internal Wyeth memos now on record in the litigation, the company had received an additional 37 PPH reports more than a year earlier. In June 1994, a high-level company official recommended updating the Pondimin label. In 1995, an international study concluded that the risk of PPH was 30 times greater for obese patients who took the drugs than for the general population.

… the litigation played a part in scuppering three attempts to merge the company.

The Pondimin label was not changed to reflect that study, or the increased number of PPH cases, until 1997.

The Organisation for Professionals in Regulatory Affairs

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AHP “ Phen-Fen ” Litigation (cont.)

The Daily Texan 29 April 2004

$1 billion awarded in fen-phen case

…Wyeth, whose share price fell 2 percent to $38.49 Wednesday, said it will appeal the $1.014 billion verdict, which includes $900 million in punitive damages, after Judge Donald Floyd enters the judgment formally next week. … “It represents a jury [that] was horrified by the conduct of Wyeth” … two jurors said afterward they wanted a bigger award - large enough to put Wyeth out of business. …Wyeth has paid out about $1 billion from a $3.75 billion trust set up in 1999 to compensate people who took Pondimin or Redux and to settle class action lawsuits.

…About 78,000 people decided not to participate in the trust and chose instead to sue Wyeth.

The Organisation for Professionals in Regulatory Affairs

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