Both my parents worked full time jobs. So, before school age had arrived, they would drop me off at my Grandparents' house. I'd arrive early; do the requisite crying as my parents would drive off; and then I'd settle in for a day with my grandmother that might also include some farm chores.
My grandmother had probably already been up about 3 hours by the time that I arrived. The wood stove was pumping heat and she was busy peeling potatoes or getting ready for washday. No electric heat or electric washer and dryer to just turn on and leave. That's why it took a whole day, basically, to wash and roll through the ringer and then hang it up.
I would always look forward to seeing my "Pop Pop" come back from the farm, if I hadn't gotten there early enough to go with him to feed the pigs and collect the eggs. Milking had been done long before that arrival time. He would come back for lunch. Usually, it was a pretty good spread of home grown farm food. Some good "fixins", as they say.
Anyway, I wrote those previous three paragraphs to get to what would happen after lunch. My grandmother and I would sit down to watch her "soaps". One was the long running program, "Days of Our Lives". It always started with the "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of our Lives". I analogize that opening to the constant sand that is running against Wyeth and Pfizer Drug Companies.
On November 2, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued its opinion in the case of Scroggin v. Wyeth.(Download Scroggin Opinion) On the lower level, a jury had awarded Ms Scroggin a verdict of $2.75 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages against Wyeth and $8M in punitive against UpJohn. The lower level Court set aside the punitive verdicts and entered judgment on the compensatory. The Drug companies appealed the compensatory verdict and Ms Scroggin appealed the setting aside of the punitive damage verdict.
The Eighth Circuit upheld the $2.75 Million in compensatory and sent the case back to the lower level jury, to determine what amount of punitives should be entered against Wyeth. It upheld setting aside the UpJohn punitive verdict but didn't want the UpJohn evidence to have any influence on the punitive verdict against Wyeth.
Ms Scroggin was happy that the Court was now ordering the consideration of the punishment damages against Wyeth. Amazingly, Wyeth(now owned by Pfizer) issued a press release that somehow suggested a victory in the Eighth Circuit opinion. The fact that the punitives had originally been set aside and was now going to be considered, was escaping them, apparently.
As my previous blogs have suggested, on these verdicts involving Wyeth and its hormone therapy drug Prempro, it has been amazing to watch the defense spin of the verdicts. Somehow, it seems like a bunker mentality to me. The attached link titles the Court opinion, "Hormone Therapy Victims Win Important Appeal". That's how I see that the hormone therapy litigation is proceeding.
Notwithstanding, Wyeth and Pfizer seem to be seeing it differently. That's why it makes me travel back in time, as I sat in my grandmother's living room and saw the sand running through the hourglass. Can those drug companies feel the sand escaping too?
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