U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler, presiding over all federal valsartan recall lawsuits, allowed the direct filing of new cases into the multidistrict litigation(MDL) established in New Jersey, where all similar claims are consolidated for pretrial proceedings.
Judge Kugler issued a case management order on April 9, in which the process for the direct filing was outlined. There are nearly 50 product liability lawsuits filed against generic valsartan drug manufacturers and distributors, each with similar claims that the blood pressure drug distributed all these years were tainted with cancer-causing impurities, including N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) and N-Nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA), which are supposedly by-products of the drug's manufacturing process.
