Jury awards $1.36 million to Texas woman

NEW YORK — Wyeth (WYE) shares fell more than 7 percent Friday after a Texas jury awarded $1.36 million to a woman who claimed she was injured by its two diet pills once used in the "fen-phen" slimming cocktail.

Fox News 11/7/03 - "We are disappointed and feel that the verdict is contrary to the evidence presented," said Wyeth spokesman Doug Petkus. He said the company plans to appeal Thursday's unanimous decision by a jury at Jefferson County District Court in Beaumont, Texas.

It concluded the drugs were responsible for damaging the woman's heart and that she deserved $500,000 from Wyeth for future mental anguish, $50,000 for past mental anguish, $2,480 for past medical bills and $810,000 for projected future medical bills.

Wyeth has taken $16.6 billion in charges to pay patients and relatives of patients who were harmed or died as a result of the drugs Pondimin, whose chemical name is fenfluramine, and a similar medicine called Redux (dexfenfluramine).

Both medicines were withdrawn in 1997 after being linked to heart-valve damage and hundreds of cases of a highly fatal lung disorder called primary pulmonary hypertension.

Sena Lund, a drug analyst for Cathay Financial LLC, said the Texas judgment indicates Wyeth may need to set aside perhaps another $5 billion to cover its financial liability to fen-phen users.

Lund said such an amount in new fen-phen charges would crimp Wyeth's 2004 earnings by perhaps 10 cents per diluted share, leaving growth next year of about 7 percent instead of the 11 percent growth that Wall Street now expects.

"Fen-phen is still haunting Wyeth," said Lund, adding that the company early last year changed its name from American Home Products to distance itself from the fen-phen controversy.

Doctors typically combined one of the Wyeth drugs with the appetite suppressant phentermine to make up the fen-phen cocktail that was taken by an estimated 6 million Americans in the mid-1990s.

The company several years ago formed a settlement trust that assigns certain damages depending on the level of heart injury. But tens of thousands of former users of the drugs have opted out of the settlement, thereby reserving the right to sue Wyeth individually.

Analysts are looking to see the level of damages awarded in such cases to determine what Wyeth's total future payout might be.

Shares of Wyeth were down $3.38, or 7.9 percent, at $39.32, on the New York Stock Exchange.

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