The judge who oversaw the first punitive damages trial in the Risperdal litigation has decided to slash the award to $6.8 million after a Philadelphia jury handed up a record-busting $8 billion verdict against Janssen Pharmaceuticals last fall.

On Friday, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Kenneth Powell granted the post-trial remittitur motion that Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, had filed in the case Murray v. Janssen Pharmaceuticals. According to the docket, Janssen's post-trial motions were denied in all other respects.

Although Powell's two-sentence order did not outline his reasoning for drastically cutting the $8 billion jury award, the decision brings the punitive damages award to 10 times the $680,000 compensatory award for plaintiff Nicholas Murray.

Murray's attorney, Thomas Kline of Kline & Specter, said he believed that, "when the merits are reviewed that the $8 billion will be reinstated."

"The ruling is wrong and will be appealed. It wipes out a valid award of a jury which met all of the parameters under the decisional law and constitutional guardrails. The remitted verdict provides essentially no punishment for the worst of the worst of corporate misconduct," he said in an emailed statement. "Further, this ruling defeats the purpose of punitive damages, which is to punish and deter. It incentivizes bad behavior and undermines the right to trial by jury."

Janssen did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

New York attorney John Winter of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler and Ethel Johnson of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, who is from Texas, tried the case for J&J.