$9 Billion Punitive Verdict Against Takeda and Eli Lilly in First Federal Actos Bladder Cancer Trial

Terrence Allen was a shopkeeper from upstate New York who took Actos, Takeda's blockbuster diabetes drug, for years before being diagnosed with bladder cancer. His lawsuit became the first federal bellwether trial in the multidistrict litigation consolidating thousands of Actos claims before Judge Rebecca Doherty in Lafayette, Louisiana. Paul Pennock, then chairing the drug litigation practice at Weitz & Luxenberg and serving as one of two court-appointed co-lead counsel for the entire MDL, brought the case to trial in early 2014, years before he moved to Morgan & Morgan, where he now leads the firm's national mass tort practice.

The trial's most damaging evidence was not about chemistry but about conduct. Plaintiffs showed that Takeda had destroyed files belonging to key employees despite a duty to preserve them, and Judge Doherty allowed the jury to hear about the spoliation. Against internal documents suggesting the company had downplayed bladder cancer signals to protect a multibillion-dollar franchise, Takeda's insistence that the science was on its side rang hollow.

In April 2014, the jury awarded the Allens $1.475 million in compensatory damages, then attached a punitive number no one in the courtroom was prepared for: $9 billion, split as $6 billion against Takeda and $3 billion against its U.S. marketing partner Eli Lilly. It was among the largest punitive verdicts in American history, and both companies announced immediate appeals, with Lilly noting it was fully indemnified by Takeda.

That number was never going to survive, and it didn't, a fact worth stating plainly. In October 2014, Judge Doherty found the award unconstitutionally excessive and slashed it to $27.65 million against Takeda and $9.22 million against Lilly, roughly $36.9 million combined, while pointedly refusing to disturb the jury's liability findings and condemning Takeda's document destruction in her opinion.

The verdict's real power was what it did to the rest of the litigation. With the Allen findings on the books and more bellwethers queued, Takeda agreed in April 2015 to a global settlement worth $2.4 billion to resolve roughly 9,000 U.S. Actos claims, at the time one of the largest pharmaceutical mass tort settlements ever reached. Pennock, as MDL co-lead, was an architect of that resolution.

The Allen verdict predates Pennock's Morgan & Morgan tenure, but it is the credential that defines him: the case that made him one of the country's most sought-after mass tort lawyers, and the playbook he carried with him when he joined the firm in 2019 to build its national mass tort operation from the ground up.