In a resounding victory for consumers over the pharmaceutical industry, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that patients harmed by medication can sue the drugmaker for neglecting to list known dangers on the label even if federal regulators haven't required them to do so. The 6-3 decision upheld $6.7 million in damages to a musician from Vermont who lost an arm to gangrene after being injected in 2000 with an anti-nausea drug manufactured by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

The majority rejected arguments by Wyeth and the Bush administration that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of the drug's label in 1955 barred all claims of negligence under state laws. The label warned doctors to use extreme caution in injecting the drug but did not tell them it should never be injected. The court said the company was on notice of the danger - citing at least 20 similar reports of amputations since the 1960s - and could be sued for not adding such a warning on its own.