Last week, the pharmaceutical company, Takeda, was ordered to pay $1.3 million in punitive damages to a former Philadelphia schoolteacher who “argued the drugmaker’s Actos diabetes medicine caused his bladder cancer”, Japan Times writes.

Only a few days earlier, that man was awarded over $2.3 million in compensatory damages.

According to that Japan Times article, this was the “fifth Actos patient to convince a jury that Takeda’s former top-selling drug causes bladder cancer. Last year, a federal jury in Louisiana ordered Takeda and Eli Lilly & Co., which at one time sold Actos in the U.S., to pay $9 billion in punitive damages to a shopkeeper who blamed his cancer on the drug. That award was cut to $36.8 million.”

So far, over 8,000 Actos lawsuits have been filed in the United States over the drug’s alleged undisclosed connection with increased risk for bladder cancer, and many of those cases have been consolidated before federal courts.

JT: “Takeda argued in court filings the company properly vetted the drug and included all required warnings on its safety label. It has battled former users’ claims in trials across the country starting in 2013.”

Bloomberg News explains that the Philadelphia schoolteacher was compensated $300,000 for medical expenses and $2 million for pain and suffering after Takeda “failed to properly warn [his] doctors about Actos’s cancer risks.”

Of course, this is still a relatively insignificant company for the largest drug company in Asia, generating $16 billion in revenue since the 1999 Actos release.

Bloomberg: “The Pennsylvania case is Kristufek v. Takeda Pharmaceuticals America Inc., Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. The consolidated Actos case in Louisiana is In Re Actos (Pioglitazone) Products Liability Litigation, 11-md-02299, U.S. District Court, Western District of Louisiana (Lafayette).”