As the state Supreme Court on Tuesday considered a punitive damages award of $8.6 million for a breast cancer survivor who took Wyeth’s hormone replacement therapy drug Prempro, Justice Seamus P. McCaffery asked during oral arguments in Philadelphia whether it would be absurd to allow punitive damages in the case of a drug approved by federal authorities.
McCaffery asked how great a burden should there be placed on drugmakers when every human body is different, when there are risks and benefits to using prescription drugs, and there is not a "smoking gun," as he said there was in the tobacco litigation, to show that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer, chose to hide the increased risks of breast cancer from taking its hormone replacement therapy drugs from the consuming public.
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