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Pfizer Jury Said to Award $75 Million Prempro Verdict to Woman

November 6, 2009

Pfizer Inc. must pay about $75 million in punitive damages to an Illinois woman who developed cancer after taking one of the drugmaker’s menopause treatments, people familiar with a sealed verdict in the case said.

 

A Philadelphia jury ordered Pfizer’s Wyeth unit on Oct. 26 to pay the bad-conduct award, which is about 20 times larger than the $3.7 million in actual damages the panel awarded to Connie Barton over her use of Wyeth’s Prempro menopause drug, according to people with direct knowledge of the verdict.

 

A judge ordered Barton’s punitive-damage award sealed at Wyeth’s request until the trial of another Prempro lawsuit in the same courthouse is completed. Lawyers in that case say jurors won’t start deliberating on that suit’s claims for another three weeks.

 

Read Article: Bloomberg 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney  

Michigan Supreme Court justices take up doctor liability

More than 10 years after an explosion of violence and death at the office of a Southfield psychiatrist, the Michigan Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday about whether the estate of the slain psychiatrist is liable for injuries a patient suffered when a former patient shot them.

 

Elizabeth Dawe was shot several times by Joseph Brooks Jr. while participating in a group therapy session with Dr. Reuvan Bar-Levav in June 1999.

 

Besides shooting Dawe and murdering Bar-Levav, Brooks killed a patient and injured three others before turning the gun on himself. Brooks had attended the group until several months earlier, when Bar-Levav refused to continue treating him because he declined to take medication for his schizophrenia.

 

Read Article: Detroit Free Press  

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney  

 

Steel giant must pay $1.2 million in bias suit

Steel giant Nucor Corp. must pay $1.2 million to a half-dozen former and current black employees for racial discrimination at its northeast Arkansas plants.

 

A predominantly white jury awarded the damages to five Arkansans and a Tennessean last week in federal court. It agreed they suffered a racially hostile environment because of job-site images of nooses and company-sold symbols of the Confederacy, repeated references to apes and threatening gestures from co-workers and supervisors. Including punitive damages against the company, the jury awarded each man $200,000.

 

Last week’s verdict follows another blow dealt to Nucor Corp. in a related case in South Carolina. Black workers there have claimed similar discriminatory practices.

 

Read Article: Arkansas Democrat-Gazzete  

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney  

 

$2.3 million or $800,000 the question in court

A voter initiative that fundamentally altered medical malpractice litigation in Nevada was the basis of an appeal heard last week by a panel of Nevada Supreme Court justices.

 

At issue is the $2.3 million contingency fee longtime Las Vegas attorney Robert Vannah charged a client harmed by a doctor and whether the Keep Our Doctors in Nevada ballot measure passed in 2004 was intended to be retroactive.

 

The law put a $350,000 cap on noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, and limited contingency fees attorneys can charge clients who allege they are victims of medical malpractice.

 

Read Article: Las Vegas Review Journal  

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

 

 

Regulators slam Toyota over ‘no defect’ claim

Federal safety regulators have sharply rebuked Toyota Motor Corp. for issuing “inaccurate and misleading” statements asserting that no defect exists in the 3.8 million vehicles it recalled after a Lexus sedan accelerated out of control in San Diego County, killing four people.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a statement Wednesday that the recalled Toyota and Lexus vehicles do have an “underlying defect” that involves the design of the accelerator pedal and the driver’s foot well.

Toyota officials have said they believe the Aug. 28 accident, and other uncontrolled-acceleration incidents across the country, occurred after the gas pedal became entrapped in an improperly installed floor mat.

 

Read Article: LA Times

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney 

 

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