On August 20, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel Schneider made it mandatory for all Valsartan lawsuits to be filed along with a short-form complaint that will help in tracking and coordinating the cases. The order also requires the seven-page form to be completed by plaintiffs who have previously filed complaints within 30 days.
The short-form will help both parties and the court to divide the Valsartan cancer lawsuits more efficiently as the size of the MDL is expected to grow rapidly in the coming months, with an estimate of more than 2,000 lawsuits to be filed under the federal court system.
The short form complaint includes options of more than 50 manufacturers, distributors, repackagers, labelers, pharmacies, and wholesalers involved in the sale of contaminated valsartan pills, which impacted most of the U.S. supply for the hypertension drug in recent years. The form also provides a list of seven different kinds of cancers linked with injury the plaintiffs suffered including kidney, liver, colorectal, pancreatic, esophageal, stomach, and small intestine cancer.
Diovan (Valsartan) was manufactured by Novartis International AG and was approved by the FDA on August 14, 2002. Diovan lost its patent in September 2014. The launch of the generic drug had been on hold since patent expiry due to regulatory problems with the FDA. In 2014, a US-based Ohm Laboratories (Ohm), a subsidiary of Ranbaxy Laboratories, was the first to get the approval from FDA for generic Valsartan. Thereafter, many generic versions of Valsartan came into the market via many other pharma companies.
Currently, more than 100 lawsuits on Valsartan cancer cases are pending in the federal court system, each raising similar allegations that poor manufacturing techniques led to contamination of the pills with human carcinogens, which included N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) and N-Nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA).
Since February 2019, Valsartan claims are consolidated under MDL No. 2875 (In re Valsartan Products Liability Litigation) in the United States District Court, District of New Jersey, presided by Judge Robert B. Kugler, U.S.D.J and Hon. Joel Schneider, U.S.M.J.
