Pfizer Beats Back Appeal of Several Thousand Lipitor Suits

Pfizer Inc. scored a win when a federal appeals court affirmed a ruling that threw out suits by several thousand women alleging its cholesterol drug Lipitor caused diabetes.

The women’s suits were combined in federal multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, which granted summary judgment to the drugmaker in Januuary 2017.

That court correctly found the plaintiffs failed to produce evidence to prove their cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said June 12.

The trial court properly excluded the opinions of plaintiffs’ three experts who sought to link the ...