Kansas City Jury's $2.2 Billion Verdict Over Diluted Chemotherapy

Georgia Hayes was being treated for ovarian cancer at a Kansas City area clinic when investigators discovered that her pharmacist, Robert Courtney, had been secretly watering down the chemotherapy drugs he prepared for her and thousands of other patients. Hayes received 27 chemotherapy treatments with drugs that Courtney had diluted at his Research Medical Tower Pharmacy. Courtney later admitted he had been diluting cancer medications since 1992 for profit, a scheme that federal investigators said may have touched as many as 4,200 patients treated by 400 doctors across roughly 98,000 prescriptions. He pleaded guilty in federal court to 20 counts of adulterating, misbranding, and tampering with the cancer drugs Taxol and Gemzar, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison, the maximum allowed under his plea agreement.

Hayes' case was the first of hundreds of civil suits against Courtney to go to trial. In Jackson County Circuit Court, her attorneys, Grant Davis and Michael Ketchmark, presented evidence over two days of testimony that Courtney's dilution had reduced Hayes' chances of survival and caused her to suffer needlessly while believing she was receiving full strength treatment. Courtney's side argued the diluted drugs had not changed her outcome because her cancer was already terminal. The jury rejected that argument.

On October 10, 2002, the jury returned a verdict for Hayes of $225,571,439 in compensatory damages, including $571,439 in medical and other economic losses, plus $2 billion in punitive damages against Courtney. Ketchmark, speaking for Hayes after the verdict, said the size of the award reflected the scale of what Courtney had done to her and to hundreds of other cancer patients, and that it would likely bring the wave of separate lawsuits against him to a resolution.

Jackson County Circuit Judge Lee Wells found the jury's punitive award excessive under the due process limits courts had already begun applying to large punitive verdicts, and used his authority to order a remittitur. Wells left the $571,439 in economic damages untouched, cut the non-economic damages from $225 million to $29.5 million, and cut the punitive damages from $2 billion to $300 million, for a reduced judgment of $330,071,439. That judgment stood, and no appellate decision disturbing it appears on the public record. Hayes had already told reporters on the day of the verdict that although she probably would never see a dime of it, she felt justice had been done.

Her doubts proved well founded. Courtney's malpractice coverage was shared among hundreds of victims who had also sued him, and a case reporter tracking the verdict noted at the time that it was highly unlikely Hayes would ever collect any significant portion of the judgment against Courtney personally. More than a year later, when Courtney's insurer resolved the broader wave of claims against him, Hayes said the case had never been about the money for her, only about holding Courtney responsible for what he had done.