A H Robins Co

More than 95% of A. H. Robins Co.'s stockholders and Dalkon Shield claimants have approved a reorganization plan that could end the company's nearly three-year bankruptcy struggle, lawyers said Monday. The plan would set up a nearly $2.5-billion trust fund to satisfy claims by women who allege that they were injured by using the Dalkon Shield intrauterine birth-control device and provides for a $3.2-billion buyout of the 122-year-old company by the American Home Products Corp.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether county child care workers may be held liable for "gross negligence" for failing to protect a child who was bruised, battered and nearly beaten to death by his father.

A. H. Robins Co. came another step closer to emerging from bankruptcy Wednesday when a federal judge approved the troubled drug maker's merger with American Home Products Corp. The approval was given only after last-minute negotiating in which the two companies--at the judge's suggestion--agreed to boost initial funding of the Dalkon Shield trust to $100 million from $10 million.

A. H. Robins Co. has filed a fourth version of its reorganization plan to guide it from Chapter 11 bankruptcy into a merger with the American Home Products Corp. while providing a settlement for Dalkon Shield claimants. The plan and an accompanying disclosure statement were submitted to a federal bankruptcy judge Monday night and will be the subject of a March 10 hearing in U.S. District Court.

Two suitors courting A. H. Robins Co. have deferred to American Home Products Corp., which made a bid for the pharmaceutical company that apparently could not be matched. Both Sanofi S.A. of France and Rorer Group Inc. said Wednesday that they could not top American Home's bid, which offered prompt payment to women who say they were injured by Robins' Dalkon Shield birth control device.

American Home Products, in a victory over two rivals in the battle to acquire A. H. Robins Co., Tuesday broke a 2 1/2-year stalemate over the Richmond, Va., firm's future. The New York conglomerate's winning move was to increase the amount of cash that would be paid quickly to tens of thousands of women who claim injuries from the Dalkon Shield intrauterine contraceptive device.