A panel of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that “There was sufficient evidence of gross negligence and willful and wanton misconduct to support imposition of punitive damages,” against Pfizer and units Wyeth and Pharmacia & Upjohn. As a result, Pfizer must pay more than $45 million in damages to Connie Barton and Donna Kendall.  The court noted that while the amount of punitive damages was large, it “correlated with the enormity of the defendants’ wrongs,

Pfizer and its Wyeth and Pharmacia & Upjohn units have resolved about 46 percent of suits that claimed the companies’ hormone-replacement medicines, including Prempro, Prempro and Provera, caused breast cancer, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Pfizer said it added $68 million to the $772 million it already reserved for the cases according to Bloomberg. The latest revelation comes after a $72.6 million dollar jury verdict against Pfizer and its units Wyeth and

On July 8, 2011, Pfizer filed a pleading in the MDL Proceedings (4:03-cv-1507) asserting that there may be no reason for core discovery to take place in the MDL proceedings thereby permitting many cases to be remanded to the trial court for scheduling orders with trial dates.  This development may be significant for the thousands of cases in the MDL proceeding. Cases ripe for remand will involve those cases where only Wyeth/Upjohn are named as