However, law professors and plaintiffs' attorneys said Wednesday the size of the award on Tuesday _ the biggest ever in a fen-phen case _ could push Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth to settle more of the tens of thousands of pending fen-phen lawsuits, rather than risking more huge jury verdicts.

"They had more power until this decision," said Shelby Moore, a professor at South Texas College of Law.

Already, Wyeth has set aside $16.6 billion to settle fen-phen cases since it pulled its drugs, Pondimin and Redux, off the market in 1997 amid mounting reports they had caused heart valve and lung damage in some of the roughly 5.8 million Americans who took them.

The two drugs were the fenfluramine half of the diet drug combination prescribed by many doctors but not officially approved; the other drug, phentermine, was not implicated in health problems.

Wyeth, whose share price fell 2 percent to $38.49 Wednesday, said it will appeal the $1.014 billion verdict, which includes $900 million in punitive damages, once Judge Donald Floyd officially enters the judgment. That's expected to happen next week.

"I'm quite confident, because of errors in the case, that this is going to get reversed on appeal," said Tim Atkeson, one of three lawyers who represented Wyeth in the six-week trial in Beaumont, Texas.

Atkeson said lawyers for the family of Cynthia Cappel-Coffey never proved Wyeth's Pondimin caused the condition that killed her at age 41 in January 2003, PPH, or primary pulmonary hypertension, a dangerously high pressure in lung blood vessels.

Cappel-Coffey, an X-ray technician and mother of three young girls who weighed 285 pounds, took Pondimin for five months in 1997. She was diagnosed with PPH in February 2002, but Atkeson said scientific research indicates the condition normally occurs shortly after taking the medicines.

He said he was not allowed to tell the jury the woman had taken four other diet drugs, two them linked to risk of PPH, after taking Pondimin. He also said that an error by the judge allowed to the jury to override the Texas cap on punitive damages.

Joe Sanders, a professor at University of Houston's law school, said it appeared the judge had misapplied rules for overriding that cap.

"I will be stunned if it stands the way it is," Sanders said of the award, adding it will reinforce Beaumont's reputation as having juries very friendly to plaintiffs.

Michelle Parfitt, a lawyer who represents plaintiffs against pharmaceutical companies, called the "extraordinary verdict" unrealistic and likely to be reduced.

"It represents a jury (that) was horrified by the conduct of Wyeth," she said.

John O'Quinn, the lead attorney for Cappel-Coffey's husband, said Wednesday that evidence strongly supported the verdict, and that two jurors said afterward they wanted a bigger award _ big enough to put Wyeth out of business.

According to Atkeson, Wyeth first received reports from doctors about heart valve problems in some diet drug users in January 1997, and a few months later added warnings on the drugs' package inserts and mailed letters about their risks to 450,000 U.S. doctors. It stopped selling the drugs in September 1997.

O'Quinn and other plaintiffs' attorneys say the company delayed issuing warnings, kept the drug on the market longer than it should have and even concealed evidence of risks from Redux to get it approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Pondimin had been sold since 1973 by a company Wyeth later acquired; its chemical cousin, Redux, had been on the market since 1995.

At roughly $2 billion a year, legal costs _ for jury awards, settlements with plaintiffs and fees for its lawyers _ amount to more than one-eighth of Wyeth's annual revenues.

Wyeth was so nervous about the outcome of the Beaumont trial that it told reporters, analysts and stockholders in telephone calls and its annual meeting last week that the case _ the first involving PPH to go to trial _ wasn't a bellwether because patients with that condition represent a fraction of 1 percent of all the fen-phen claimants. The rest all claim heart valve damage.

Meanwhile, Wyeth has paid out about $1 billion from a $3.75 billion trust set up in 1999 to compensate people who took Pondimin or Redux and to settle class action lawsuits. Trust participants have received varying amounts, from reimbursement for the cost of the prescription diet drugs to payments for medical care.

But Marc Bern, George Fleming and other lawyers representing thousands of the diet drug users say Wyeth has been delaying trust payouts and that the trust is woefully underfunded.

About 78,000 people decided not to participate in the trust and instead to sue Wyeth; many claims have been settled confidentially by Wyeth. Other lawsuits are pending or have gone to trial, with a few jury verdicts well above $10 million _ but some later reduced.

Of the 72,000 pending claims made to the trust, about 29,000 were disqualified as baseless, about 14,500 are nearly ready to be paid, and about 28,500 either must fix errors in their claims or have since decided to opt out of the settlement. Monday is the last of three deadlines for Pondimin and Redux users to opt out of the trust.