By Brendan Pearson
(Reuters) – A Delaware judge has rejected a request by GlaxoSmithKline and other drugmakers to appeal a ruling that allows more than 70,000 lawsuits alleging that heartburn drug Zantac causes cancer.
The ruling by Judge Vivian Medinella of the Delaware Supreme Court means that drug companies, which also include Pfizer (New York Stock Exchange:) Sanofi (Nasdaq: NASDAQ: BIG) and Boehringer Ingelheim will have to apply directly to the Delaware Supreme Court for leave to appeal. GSK said it has already filed its appeal with that court.
If the state Supreme Court declines to accept the appeal, it would open the way for the Zantac lawsuits to go to trial.
“Judge Medinella has roundly rejected GSK, Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer and Sanofi’s attempt to end the fraudulent jury system in Delaware,” said Jennifer Moore, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
“The scientific consensus remains that there is no consistent or reliable evidence that ranitidine increases the risk of any type of cancer,” GlaxoSmithKline said in a statement. Ranitidine is the active ingredient in the now-discontinued drug.
The lawsuits began piling up after the FDA in 2020 asked manufacturers to pull the drug from the market over concerns that ranitidine could break down into a cancer-causing chemical called NDMA over time or when exposed to heat.
The drug companies say Medinella should have barred plaintiffs from presenting expert testimony that Zantac can cause cancer, as a federal judge did in 2022 in about 50,000 central Florida claims.
The plaintiffs’ cases depend on that testimony, and cannot go to trial without it.
Industry groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, backed the drug companies’ appeal in a filing last month, saying that allowing Medinilla’s ruling to stand had diluted evidence standards in the traditionally business-friendly state and threatened to turn it into an “incubator for product liability and class action lawsuits.”
Medinilla wrote Monday that she did not apply a different standard than the Florida federal judge, but simply reached a different conclusion about the evidence in the case.
Zantac was first approved in 1983, became the world’s best-selling drug in 1988 and one of the first drugs to exceed $1 billion in annual sales. It was originally marketed by a leading company, GlaxoSmithKline, and was later sold to other companies in succession.
The vast majority of the pending cases are in Delaware. Only one case, against GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim in Illinois, has gone to trial, and both companies won last month.