The world’s biggest drugmaker, Pfizer has paid $894 million towards the settlement of its most outstanding litigation around its two painkillers – Bextra and Celebrex - sparked by concerns that they caused heart attacks and strokes. According to Jayne Conroy, a plaintiffs’ attorney, the company faced about 8,000 lawsuits over the drugs.

New York-based Pfizer said in a statement that the amount, which includes $745 million to settle 90 percent of the lawsuits claiming injuries from the products, will be booked in third-quarter earnings. It also said that, under the “agreements in principle,” it will also pay $60 million to 33 states and Washington, D.C., over alleged illegal promotion of Bextra and $89 million for consumer fraud lawsuits.

According to Bloomberg data, the settlement is being reported as the fourth largest in the U.S. this year.

Senior Vice-President and general counsel of Pfizer, Amy Schulman, said: “We are pleased by the favorable rulings we have achieved in this litigation and believe that now is the right time to resolve these matters. Inevitably, litigation can be distracting and putting these matters behind us helps our shareholders and, most importantly, patients and doctors.”

However, Schulman declined to say how many people had sued Pfizer over the drugs or how much the company had spent defending itself.

Attorney Conroy said settlement talks began in May, just before the first trial was scheduled to start in San Francisco. She elaborated, saying that the personal-injury settlements were negotiated separately with individual plaintiffs’ lawyers. The Wall Street Journal reported in May that firms were offered $40,000 to $50,000 a client to resolve Bextra cases and as much as $200,000 a client for Celebrex.

Though the settlement clears the lingering uncertainty after a period of rising concern about drug safety, it still leaves Pfizer struggling to replace lost sales and the threat of significant patent expiries on other drugs over the next few years.