Pharma firms engaged in the selling of the heartburn medication Zantac have won a critical fight in a lawsuit brought by individuals who say the medicine caused them to develop cancer.
The judgement means that the defendants in the claims, which include GSK and its consumer health spin-off Haleon, Sanofi, Pfizer, and Boehringer Ingelheim, will not have to face thousands of federal court lawsuits, though they will still face many thousands more filed at the state level.
Plaintiffs' attorneys have stated that they would challenge the ruling, calling it a miscarriage of justice. Shares of GSK, Haleon, and Sanofi, who are regarded to be the most vulnerable to the potential of large damages verdicts in the case, all increased following the ruling by US District Judge Florida.
GSK invented Zantac and introduced it to the market in the early 1980s as a prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medicine for conditions such as heartburn and acid indigestion. Sanofi had the rights to the over-the-counter version of the medicine, which was recalled in 2019 due to probable contamination with the suspected carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), with the FDA prohibiting sales the following year.
It was offered in generic form by numerous additional manufacturers, including Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, who have also been involved in litigation. All of the corporations have stated that they will strongly defend themselves in the cases, which experts believe might result in billions of dollars in damages if the judgments favour the plaintiffs.
GSK welcomed the verdict, citing information from 12 epidemiological studies that indicate there is no consistent or trustworthy evidence that ranitidine raises the risk of any malignancy. The verdict reflects the status of that science and guaranteed that untrustworthy and litigation-driven science did not reach the federal courts, according to the ruling.
The court rejected all |LS|federal Multi-District Litigation (MDL)|RS| lawsuits claiming the five remaining malignancies in the MDL by eliminating plaintiffs' epidemiological evidence and expert testimony based on their inadequacies and unreliability (liver, bladder, pancreatic, oesophageal, and stomach).
GSK stated that it will continue to forcefully defend itself, including against all state-level accusations.
