That is the provocative question being raised in light of an unexpected verdict last week in Texas, where a jury awarded a woman nearly $1.4 million.

The amount, which was much higher than anyone expected, unsettled Wall Street analysts and investors already concerned about the future of the company. Shares of Wyeth are down 4 percent since the verdict.

"Nobody really knows the true number of people who have serious claims," said Girish Tyagi, an analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners.

Another analyst, Richard Evans at Sanford C. Bernstein, agreed. "While the probability may be low, the Texas jury award illustrates that fen-phen settlements could threaten solvency," he wrote in a research note to investors.

For the past few years, investors have listened to executives at the Madison-based drug maker insist they have their arms around the diet-pill problem, even as reserves were regularly boosted. A total of $16.6 billion has been set aside.

Now, though, analysts are scrambling to calculate how much money may be required to resolve thousands of outstanding lawsuits and other claims. The litigation began after the 1997 recall of Pondimin, which was half of the fen-phen diet cocktail, and Redux, a related drug.

A Wyeth spokesman, Lowell Weiner, argued this week each case is different, making it difficult to make predictions. Not every diet-pill user who files a lawsuit or has agreed to settle a claim will be shown to have serious heart-valve damage, he said.

"This will all take a while to play out," Weiner said, adding that Wyeth is appealing the Texas award. "But we're going to fight hard."

No one knows, though, just how big a pot of money will Wyeth need.

The math is complex, because the litigation is complicated. There are 78,000 claims filed by people ready to file a lawsuit against Wyeth, and there are another 73,000 claims filed by people who have agreed to accept a piece of a separate settlement fund.

After extrapolating numbers, Evans raised the possibility Wyeth could face $11 billion to $12 billion in "incremental" liability. Wyeth has only $3.6 billion remaining of its $16.6 billion in reserves, he said. About $2.75 billion is left in the settlement fund.

Of course, not every lawsuit will yield a $1.4 million award and Wyeth will appeal many verdicts. Nor will payments be made to each diet-pill user who agreed to settle. The fund is challenging thousands of claims and filed lawsuits against two doctors who reviewed many of them.

"Wyeth's potential liability spans a huge range," Evans said. Tyagi, the analyst at Thomas Weisel, pointed out Wyeth has several big-selling medicines. Collectively, these are forecast to help the company generate about $5 billion in cash flow over each of the next two years. In other words, he said, Wyeth's underlying operations are strong.

"But obviously, the situation is risky and uncertain at this moment," he said. "What we just saw (in Texas) isn't good news. And there's a good likelihood that other patients will later suffer side effects. So this will all continue for a while."