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By Jef Feeley

Pfizer Inc. agreed to settle an Arkansas woman’s claims that the company’s Prempro menopause drug caused her breast cancer, avoiding a second punitive damages trial in the case, according to a court filing.

New York-based Pfizer faced an Oct. 1 retrial of Donna Scroggin’s claims that the world’s largest drugmaker should pay millions of dollars as punishment for mishandling its Prempro hormone-replacement medicine, according to court records. An appeals court overturned a $27.1 million punitive award last year and ordered a new trial on damages.

The company agreed to settle Scroggin’s case, U.S. District Judge William Wilson said in an Aug. 19 court filing. Wilson is overseeing more than 8,000 cases involving the medicine, consolidated in federal court in Arkansas. Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed in the filing.

“It makes sense for Pfizer to settle because of the potential for exposure if the punitive-damages issue goes back before another jury,” Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond Law School professor who teaches classes on mass-tort law, said in an interview.

Pfizer officials declined to comment on Scroggin’s settlement, Victoria Davis, a company spokeswoman, said in an e- mail last week. Jim Morris, one of Scroggin’s lawyers, also declined to comment.

Trial Scorecard

The settlement follows the success of Pfizer’s lawyers in convincing a Philadelphia jury this month that Prempro, made by Pfizer’s Wyeth unit, was not the cause two women’s cancers. Wyeth has lost seven of the 12 Prempro cases juries have considered since the cases began going to trial in 2006.

The drugmaker got some of those verdicts thrown out at the post-trial stage or had awards reduced. It has settled some of the other cases, including Scroggin’s suit. Pfizer also has won dismissals of more than 3,000 cases at either the pretrial stage or after the cases have been set for trial, company officials say.

More than 6 million women took the hormone-replacement pills to treat menopause symptoms including hot flashes, night sweats and mood swings. The medicines are still on the market. New York-based Pfizer bought Wyeth last year for $68 billion.

Scroggin and other women contend company executives ignored studies raising questions about the link between hormone- replacement drugs and breast cancer to pump up sales.

Annual sales of Wyeth’s hormone-replacement drugs topped $2 billion before a 2002 study sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health suggested women using the medicines had a higher breast cancer risk.

Actual Damages

In March 2008, a jury in federal court in Little Rock, Arkansas, ordered Wyeth to pay a total of $29.8 million in damages to Scroggin, including $2.7 million in actual damages.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis threw out the punitive award in November 2009, saying the trial judge allowed jurors to hear inadmissible evidence in the punitive-damages phase of the first trial. It left Scroggin’s actual-damage award intact.

Pfizer also has agreed to settle another woman’s claims over the company’s menopause drugs that resulted in a $1.5 million jury award, Morris said.

A Philadelphia jury found in May 2007 that Merle Simon’s breast cancer was caused by Provera, a hormone-replacement drug made by Pfizer’s Pharmacia & Upjohn unit. A judge later threw out the $1.5 million actual-damage award. An appeals court reinstated the award in December.

The Simon case is Simon v. Wyeth, 040604229, Court of Common Pleas (Philadelphia). The Scroggin case is Scroggin v. Wyeth, 04-1169, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas (Little Rock).

To contact the reporter on this story: Jef Feeley in Wilmington, Delaware, at jfeeley@bloomberg.net.

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