“A jury awarded $1 billion to the family of a woman who once took the Wyeth-made diet drug Pondimin, part of the now-banned weight-loss combination fen-phen.” Cynthia Cappel-Coffey, who died last year at 41 of primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH), did not develop symptoms of PPH until more than four years after using the Wyeth drug. According to Bill Sims, a lawyer for Wyeth, the Beaumont judge refused to allow the company to introduce evidence that Cappel-Coffey had taken four other diet drugs in the intervening years, although all four of the other drugs warn of a risk of PPH. Wyeth has already set aside nearly $17 billion for fen-phen litigation. (“Jury awards $1 billion to family of woman whose death was connected to diet drug”, AP/Court TV, Apr. 28; Reed Abelson and Jonathan D. Glater, “Texas Jury Rules Against the Maker of Fen-Phen, a Diet Drug”, New York Times, Apr. 28; Tony Freemantle, “Beaumont jury awards $1 billion in diet drug suit”, Houston Chronicle, Apr. 28). (More: Texas Lawyer). For more on fen-phen litigation, see Jan. 25, Jan. 6, Aug. 19 and links from there. For more on Beaumont, that very special jurisdiction, see Jul. 31 and many more. And for more on attorney John O’Quinn, a frequent source of material for this page, see Feb. 26 and many more.
Fen-phen: O’Quinn extracts $1 billion from Beaumont jury
“A jury awarded $1 billion to the family of a woman who once took the Wyeth-made diet drug Pondimin, part of the now-banned weight-loss combination fen-phen.” Cynthia Cappel-Coffey, who died last year at 41 of primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH), did not develop symptoms of PPH until more than four years after using the Wyeth drug. […]
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