Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) has agreed to settle nearly 80,000 cases, or approximately 93% of the lawsuits pending in state court involving its heartburn medication, Zantac. The British drugmaker has reached the deal with 10 plaintiff’s law firms who had filed cases against the pharmaceutical giant, claiming that Zantac or its generic component ranitidine, could degrade into NDMA, a carcinogen, causing cancer in people who used it. Under the terms of the agreement GSK will pay up to $2.2 billion.
The settlement comes in the wake of a 2022 dismissal of approximately 50000 claims then pending against Pfizer, GSK, Boehringer Ingelheim and Sanofi by U.S. District Judge Robin L. Rosenberg, the judge presiding over the federal multidistrict litigation involving Zantac. In her ruling, Judge Rosenberg stated that since no scientist outside the litigation itself had linked Zantac to the development of cancer and the plaintiff’s scientists “systemically utilized unreliable methodologies with a lack of documentation on how experiments were conducted, a lack of substantiation for analytical leaps, a lack of statistically significant data and a lack of internally consistent, objective, science-based standards for the evenhanded evaluation of data,” the lawsuits were not supported by reliable scientific evidence.
GSK continues to deny any liability, maintaining that ranitidine does not cause cancer and writing in a statement published on October 9:
GSK has not admitted any liability in the State Courts Settlement or in the agreement in principle for the Qui Tam Settlement (involving a 2019 whistleblower lawsuit filed by Valisure, a Connecticut laboratory that claimed GSK defrauded the government). While the scientific consensus remains that there is no consistent or reliable evidence that ranitidine increases the risk of any cancer, GSK strongly believes that these settlements are in the best long-term interests of the company and its shareholders as they remove significant financial uncertainty, risk and distraction associated with protracted litigation.
Pfizer has also agreed to settle most of its state court Zantac cases and Sanofi is also settling approximately 4000 cases. Boehringer continues to try cases and has not announced any settlements.
Resources
https://www.law360.com/articles/1888571/gsk-settles-nearly-all-state-zantac-cases-for-up-to-2-2b
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/business/zantac-settlement-gsk.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/09/business/gsk-zantac-lawsuits/index.html
