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Couple awarded $5M in Dalkon-Shield Case
Pennsylvania - New Jersey - New York - Nationwide
By Jim Smith
Daily News Staff Writer
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1983
A jury in U.S. District Court, Philadelphia, has found the A.H. Robins Co. responsible for injuries to a Montgomery County woman who used its Dalkon-Shield as a birth control device. The jury awarded more than $5.1 million to the woman and her husband.
The 10-member jury late Wednesday afternoon, after an 18-day trial, found the company negligent, and said the shield was defective and caused a pelvic disease that forced the childless woman to undergo a total hysterectomy in 1974.
Trial took place before Chief U.S. District Judge Alfred L. Luongo.
The 45-year old Landsdale woman, whose name is being withheld by the Daily News, began suing the shield in 1970, several months after she was married.
The hysterectomy caused her to become sterile, and the removal of the fallopian tubes and both ovaries also made her menopausal.
The couple sued A.H. Robins Co. Inc., Richmond, Va., in 1976. Their Philadelphia lawyers, Thomas R. Kline and Ann M. Liacouras, argued that high company officials conspired to make false claims about the shield's superiority and medical safety.
According to court records, attorneys representing the company contended it was "impossible to state with any degree of medical certainty that the Dalkon Shield was a substantial causative factor of the injuries" she sustained.
Robins purchased the rights to market the shield in 1970.
Between 1970 and 1974, more than 2.2. million women used the shield as a birth control device. The shield was taken off the market in 1974.
Nearly 5,000 women have filed suits alleging injuries caused by the shield. Earlier this year, the supreme court let stand a federal court ruling barring consolidation of more than 1,500 suits seeking more than $2.3 billion in damages for injuries alleged to be related to the product.
Attorneys for both sides could not be reached for comment last night. The jury awarded the woman $4,585,600, and her husband, an industrial engineer, $573,400, for a total verdict of $5,159,000.