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'Fen-phen' case to proceed
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August 27, 1999: 1:09 p.m. ET
Philadelphia judge grants class-action status in diet drug lawsuit
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - A federal judge in Philadelphia has granted class-action status to a lawsuit filed by former users of the "fen-phen" diet combination who want drugmaker American Home Products to pay for their medical checkups.
The decision late Thursday by U.S. District Judge Louis G. Bechtle allows the medical monitoring case to go to trial. Similar cases in several other states are pending. Pharmaceutical analysts have said the costs of medical monitoring could run in the billions of dollars.
The plaintiffs claim that the two diet drugs that made up the so-called fen-phen cocktail, Pondimin and Redux, have been linked to heart valve damage. The company withdrew the drugs in 1997.
American Home Products has denied any wrongdoing.
"We respectfully disagree with the court's decision conditionally certifying federal medical monitoring class for certain diet drug users," company spokesman Lowell Weiner told CNNfn. "We continue to believe (the) medical monitoring order sought here is medically and scientifically unwarranted."
AHP (AHP) stock fell nearly 7 percent Friday, dropping 3 to 43 in early afternoon trading.
The Philadelphia suit seeks medical monitoring for patients who used the drugs for 30 days or more between 1992 and 1997.
In early August, a Texas jury awarded a former fen-phen user $23.3 million in damages for heart problems. It was the first jury award stemming from individual fen-phen cases, although the Madison, N.J.-based drugmaker has disclosed settling about 20 such cases out of court.
On Thursday, the company's Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories division agreed to settle claims by about 36,000 women who said they were injured by the company's Norplant birth control device.
That settlement could total at least $50 million, according to published reports. AHP admitted to no wrongdoing, saying the settlement "was purely a business decision."
-- from staff and wire reports
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American Home Products
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