$5.8 Million Verdict Finds Prempro Caused Breast Cancer, Survives Wyeth's Post-Trial Challenge

Margaret Fraser spent her career as a public-school principal in Connecticut. To manage menopause symptoms, her doctors prescribed Prempro, a hormone-replacement drug made by Wyeth that combined estrogen and progestin. Years later she was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. She and her husband, Joseph, sued Wyeth, claiming the company knew the cancer risk and failed to put an adequate warning on the label.

The case went to trial in New Haven, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, before Judge Janet Bond Arterton. Gregory Bubalo of Bubalo Law tried it, with co-counsel Neal Moskow of Ury & Moskow. The trial ran about three and a half weeks.

Bubalo's team had to prove two things at once: that Prempro could cause the specific cancer Fraser developed, and that Wyeth had the knowledge to warn women and chose not to. They put on evidence that the company understood the breast-cancer risk tied to combined hormone therapy, that it failed to adequately test and study that risk, and that its marketing misrepresented how safe the drug was.

In April 2012 the jury agreed on every count. It found that Prempro caused Fraser's invasive breast cancer, that the drug was unreasonably dangerous, that Wyeth failed to provide adequate warnings, that the company was negligent in testing and studying the risk, and that it negligently misrepresented the drug's risks and benefits. The jury awarded $3,750,000 to Margaret Fraser and $250,000 to her husband for loss of consortium, totaling $4 million in compensatory damages, and found that punitive damages were warranted.

Under Connecticut law, the judge fixes the punitive figure once a jury clears that threshold. Judge Arterton set punitive damages at $1,769,932.04, an amount tied to the plaintiffs' reasonable attorneys' fees and litigation costs. That brought the total to roughly $5.8 million.

Wyeth, by then owned by Pfizer, asked the court to throw out the verdict as a matter of law, and separately moved for a new trial and for remittitur to shrink the punitive award. Judge Arterton denied each motion in a January 14, 2014 ruling. The full award stood at $5,769,932.04.