((Automated translation by Reuters, please see disclaimer https://bit.ly/rtrsauto))
(Added response from plaintiffs’ attorneys to paragraph 5) by Brendan Pierson
Delaware’s highest court said Tuesday it will hear an appeal by GSK GSK.L and other drugmakers seeking to end more than 70,000 lawsuits alleging that Zantac, a discontinued heartburn drug, caused cancer.
GSK, Pfizer PFE.N , Sanofi SASY.PA and Boehringer Ingelheim are asking the court to overturn a lower court judge’s order allowing the plaintiffs to present expert testimony on the alleged cancer link, which the companies say is not supported by sound scientific methods. Without that testimony, the lawsuits cannot move forward.
No trial or final judgment has been issued in the Zantac lawsuits in Delaware. The state’s highest court hears appeals before final judgment only when it finds that exceptional circumstances exist.
GSK said in a statement that it was “pleased that the Supreme Court is of the view that such circumstances are present in this case.”
(Jennifer Moore and Brent Wisner, attorneys for the plaintiffs, said in a joint statement that they were “confident that the Supreme Court” will reach the same conclusion as the trial court.
Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had asked the state Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that the lower court’s decision would turn traditionally business-friendly Delaware into a “hotbed” for mass tort litigation if it stood.
First approved by U.S. regulators in 1983, Zantac became the world’s best-selling drug by 1988 and one of the first to top $1 billion in annual sales. It was sold at different times by all four companies, each of which has been hit with thousands of lawsuits.
The litigation began after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked manufacturers to remove the drug from the market in 2020 because ranitidine, the active ingredient in Zantac and its generic versions, could degrade into NDMA, a carcinogen, over time or when exposed to heat.
So far, three Zantac cases have gone to trial, all in Illinois, with two ending in defense verdicts and one in a hung jury.
Drugmakers won a major victory in 2022 when a Florida federal judge threw out plaintiffs’ expert witnesses in about 50,000 cases on the grounds that they didn’t use sound scientific methods. While the experts are different from those at issue in Delaware, the legal arguments made by both sides are similar.
Some of the Florida cases are being appealed, and the vast majority of the remaining cases are in Delaware.
Sanofi has agreed to settle about 4,000 cases, while Pfizer has reportedly agreed to settle more than 10,000 cases. The companies have also settled some individual cases before trial.