Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 9, 1994 TAG: 9401090050
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
"It's a great victory for the women's health movement," said Sybil Shainwald, the lawyer who filed the lawsuits against three small drug companies.
A lawyer for one of the companies said that because of the way the judge set up the trial, jurors haven't determined whether DES caused the women's health problems or whether the three companies were liable. He said he would fight the damage awards.
The defendants were Emons Industries of York, Pa., which was known as Amfre-Grant Pharmaceutical when it made DES; Carnrick Pharmaceutical; and Boyle & Co. of California.
Trial Judge Ira Gammerman split the trial into two parts. In the first, he ordered the jury to assume DES caused the plaintiff's health problems, and to determine what damages they deserve. Lawyers on both sides objected.
Gammerman planned to schedule a trial next month on whether DES caused the problems and whether the three companies are liable.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Leroy Hersh, said the judge made the jury rule on damages first "because the rest is practically a given." Judges have handled asbestos trials the same way, he said.
The state jury Friday awarded one cancer sufferer $12 million and two others $10 million each. Damages for women with reproductive problems other than cancer ranged up to $2 million.
DES, or diethylstilbestrol, is a synthetic hormone manufactured by an estimated 300 drug companies It was prescribed to 5 million pregnant women between 1947 and 1971 in an effort to reduce miscarriages.
The Food and Drug Administration barred pregnant women from using the drug in 1971, after doctors reported a link between mothers who took DES and rare clear-cell cervical and vaginal cancers in their daughters. DES remains available for other uses.
DES also has been linked to breast cancer in the mothers, infertility and other reproductive problems in their daughters, and infertility and possibly testicular cancers in their sons.
A handful of the cancer sufferers have won jury awards, but the latest case was the first trial for women who claim the drug caused reproductive problems, said Hersh, who has been handling DES litigation 15 years.
Even if the damages are upheld, the plaintiffs would be able to collect only a small percentage. Because the women couldn't identify which company made the DES their mothers took, under state law the companies are liable only for the percentage of the DES market share they had commanded. Jurors weren't told that, Shainwald said.
by CNB