Written by Brendan Pearson
(Reuters) – A Delaware judge allowed more than 70,000 lawsuits to proceed over the discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, ruling that expert witnesses can testify in court that the drug may cause cancer.
Friday's ruling by Judge Vivian Medinella of Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington is a setback for former Zantac maker GlaxoSmithKline. Pfizer (New York Stock Exchange symbol:), Sanofi (NASDAQ:) and Boehringer Ingelheim, who have argued that the opinions of expert witnesses lack scientific support.
Medinilla wrote that the strength of each side's scientific arguments should be decided by the jury.
“Delaware courts are loathe to get into the middle of technical debate between opposing scholars,” she said.
“This brings us one step closer to justice for our clients,” Wiesner, one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs, said in a statement Saturday.
GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Sanofi said in separate statements that they disagreed with the decision and would appeal. They said there is no reliable evidence to prove that Zantac causes cancer. A Boehringer Ingelheim spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2019, some manufacturers and pharmacies halted sales of Zantac after a chemical called NDMA, known to cause cancer, was discovered in some pills. Some tests have shown that the active ingredient in Zantac, ranitidine, can break down into NDMA over time or when exposed to heat.
Lawsuits began to pile up from people who said they got cancer after taking Zantac. Prosecutors said the companies knew, or should have known, that ranitidine posed a cancer risk, and they failed to warn consumers.
The US Food and Drug Administration asked manufacturers to withdraw the drug from the market in 2020. The drug makers emphasized that there was no evidence that Zantac exposed users to harmful levels of NDMA.
Medinella presides over the majority of the nearly 80,000 cases still pending in the United States over Zantac, which was once the world's best-selling drug.
In addition to the cases in Delaware, the drug companies face about 4,000 lawsuits in California state court and about 2,000 lawsuits in various other state courts around the country.
Last month, a Chicago jury rejected an Illinois woman's claim that Zantac caused her colon cancer, giving GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim a victory in their first case to go to court.
The drug companies scored a big win in 2022, when another judge dismissed about 50,000 lawsuits making similar claims that had been consolidated in federal court in Florida.
This judge concluded that the opinions of the plaintiffs' expert witnesses that Zantac could cause cancer were not supported by sound science. Plaintiffs are appealing this ruling, which involves different experts than those who participated in the Delaware case.
1988 and one of the first drugs ever to exceed $1 billion in annual sales. Originally marketed by a lead company of GSK, it was subsequently sold successively to Pfizer, Boehringer and finally to Sanofi.
