Opinion ID: 1381810
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Grant of Judgment as a Matter of Law Dismissing Jury's Punitive Damages Award

Text: Scroggin asserts that even without the excluded testimony and related exhibits, the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's award of punitive damages. We review de novo a court's grant of judgment as a matter of law. Carter, 456 F.3d at 846. Judgment as a matter of law is only warranted where the evidence at trial is wholly insufficient to support a jury finding. Id. Arkansas law allows for punitive damages when a defendant knew or ought to have known ... that his or her conduct would naturally and probably result in injury or damage and that he or she continued the conduct with malice or in reckless disregard of the consequences from which malice may be inferred. Ark. Code. Ann. § 16-55-206. [M]alice is not necessarily personal hate; it is, rather, an intent and disposition to do a wrongful act greatly injurious to another. Yeakley v. Doss, 370 Ark. 122, 257 S.W.3d 895, 899 (2007) (citing Fegans v. Norris, 351 Ark. 200, 89 S.W.3d 919 (2002)). A claim for punitive damages is properly submitted to the jury under Arkansas law where the claim is supported by substantial evidence. Morris v. Union Pac. R.R., 373 F.3d 896, 903 (8th Cir.2004) (internal quotations omitted) (citing D'Arbonne Constr. Co. v. Foster, 354 Ark. 304, 123 S.W.3d 894, 898 (2003)).
We affirm the district court's grant of judgment as a matter of law to Upjohn. Most of the evidence presented during the punitive damages phase concerned Wyeth, and the evidence related to Upjohn focused on its efforts to market Provera as the other half of estrogen replacement therapy. These advertisements violated federal regulations, but there is no dispute that prescribing progestin along with estrogen had become the standard of care in hormone replacement therapy. Scroggin also contends that a jury could infer malice because Upjohn failed to conduct an in-house study of the breast cancer risk after the Degge Group found that further study was needed. Upjohn, however, did not conceal or restrict the dissemination of the information. It allowed the Degge Group to publish its findings, thus informing the scientific community of the current state of the science. On this record, then, there was not substantial evidence showing that Upjohn acted with such a conscious indifference to the consequences that malice may be inferred. D'Arbonne Constr. Co., 123 S.W.3d at 898.
We adopt the district court's alternative holding as to Wyeth and remand for a new trial on punitive damages. Scroggin presented sufficient evidence to submit the question of punitive damages to the jury, even without Dr. Parisian's testimony. Moreover, many of the stricken exhibits had been admitted prior to Dr. Parisian's testimony and without any requirement that they be presented in relation to Dr. Parisian's knowledge of FDA regulations. Accordingly, the jury could have considered those exhibits and drawn its own conclusions. In ruling on the post-verdict motions, the district court set forth a detailed analysis of the evidence, explaining that each piece failed to present clear and convincing evidence of reckless indifference. We conclude that this individualized treatment of the evidence may inadvertently have obscured the full scope of Wyeth's conduct that the evidence collectively portrayed. Although Wyeth's failure to organize one study to allow for adequate evaluation of the breast cancer risk, or its attempts to undermine the results of one adverse publication, may not reflect reckless disregard, a consistent pattern of such conduct might do so. A jury could find that although each study added to the evidence suggesting a risk of breast cancer, Wyeth nevertheless continued to engage in a practice of both inaction and mitigation. The district court noted that the evidence showed that Wyeth attempted to convey that there was no definitive link between estrogen plus progestin hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer. But Scroggin's claim also rested on the theory that Wyeth deliberately avoided studying hormone replacement therapy's effect on breast cancer. Moreover, a jury could reasonably construe Wyeth's documents as repeated efforts over many years to undermine information and studies that attempted to show a breast cancer link. A jury reasonably could find that these efforts allowed Wyeth to promote the false understanding that hormone replacement therapy was not linked to breast cancer and then to promote reliance on this understanding. Viewed as a whole, then, the evidence presented could allow a jury to find or infer that Wyeth was guilty of malicious conduct within the meaning of Arkansas law. There is also merit to Scroggin's assertion that the district court characterized certain evidence in Wyeth's favor. In entertaining a motion for judgment as a matter of law, the court must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party, and it may not make credibility determinations or weigh the evidence. Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 150, 120 S.Ct. 2097, 147 L.Ed.2d 105 (2000). The law requires the district court to disregard all evidence favorable to the moving party that the jury is not required to believe. Id. at 151, 120 S.Ct. 2097. The court, however, credited Justin Victoria's characterization of Wyeth's response to the 1976 Hoover study, thus ignoring Wyeth's efforts to refute and mitigate the results of the study. Likewise, the documents suggesting that Wyeth had a policy of refusing drug samples for breast cancer studies are not as clear as Wyeth would have the jury believe. These documents, and many of the stricken documents, were Wyeth's internal documents and thus not capable of being rebutted or characterized by Scroggin's witnesses. The jury could have concluded that the documents spoke for themselves and rejected Wyeth's self-interested explanation. Cf. Wilcox v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 253 F.3d 1069, 1070-71 (8th Cir.2001) (noting that it would not be obvious error to credit employer's affidavit detailing employee's performance deficiencies when employee was given a clear opportunity to contradict the affidavit). For these reasons, we conclude that there was sufficient evidence upon which a jury could conclude that Wyeth acted with reckless disregard to the risk of injury, even without Dr. Parisian's testimony. The admission and the jury's consideration of Dr. Parisian's testimony, however, amounted to prejudicial error, and thus the appropriate remedy is a new trial. Because a new trial may be had on punitive damages alone without injustice to the parties, we adopt the district court's alternative judgment granting a new trial to Wyeth on the punitive damages claim. See England v. Gulf & W. Mfg. Co., 728 F.2d 1026, 1029 (8th Cir. 1984) (citing Gasoline Prods. Co. v. Champlin Ref. Co., 283 U.S. 494, 500, 51 S.Ct. 513, 75 L.Ed. 1188 (1931)). We have considered Wyeth's and Upjohn's assertion that a new trial on the liability phase is required due to district court errors and conclude that none of the alleged errors affected Wyeth's or Upjohn's substantial rights.