Our attorneys also provide the latest updates from the Zantac class action lawsuit (including the disastrous news of the class action judge dismissing all of the federal court Zantac lawsuits. This page was updated on April 4, 2024.
Zantac Cancer Lawsuit Updates 2024
- April 22, 2024: Bloomberg is reporting Zantac settlement we talked about in our last update was for approximately $25,000 a case. That is certainly way below – way below – what the original values of these claims were thought to be.
- April 4, 2024: Sanofi SA has reached a settlement in approximately 4,000 lawsuits where it was accused of failing to warn that its Zantac heartburn medication could potentially cause cancer. This settlement, the first significant resolution regarding Zantac-related cases, is limited to litigations outside Delaware. We are still waiting on the Daubert ruling in that case which involves 75,000 Zantac lawsuits. The exact terms and the financial implications for Sanofi remain undisclosed. The defendants do not want to let one of these cases go to trial. (We will continue to provide Zantac news and updates because that is what we do. But we are still not taking new Zantac claims.)
- February 29, 2024: Glaxo agreed to yet another confidential Zantac lawsuit settlement in California in Boyd/Steenvoord, a case headed for trial on April 2, 2014. The company has stated that this settlement demonstrates its preference to sidestep the disruptions associated with extended legal proceedings. Another way of saying it? The defendants are scared to take one of these lawsuits to trial.
- February 2, 2024: Glaxo confirmed that a confidential settlement had been reached with David Browne, effectively resolving his Zantac lawsuit scheduled for trial on February 20, 2024.
- February 1, 2024: Still waiting on Judge Medinilla’s ruling. Lawyers are cautiously optimistic.
- January 25, 2024: The Daubert hearing in Delaware ended yesterday. Judge Vivian L. Medinilla will decide if this litigation continues in Delaware.
- January 23, 2024: The Daubert hearing continues in Delaware and should conclude tomorrow. The ruling will be a big deal, one way or another.
- January 19, 2024: The road recovery for the Zantac litigation runs through Delaware, at least for the short term. If plaintiffs win the Daubert hearings that begin on Monday, it will be a whole new era in this litigation. Are our lawyers taking new cases again? Not yet.
- January 14, 2024: An appeal was noted in the Zantac MDL before the holidays. This appeal is make or break for the 14,389 plaintiffs in the MDL. Plaintiffs who did not file in the MDL will likely look to state court to pursue their claims.
- October 18, 2023: The defendants will not risk letting any of these cases go to trial. Instead, we believe that the defendants are going to settle these cases prior to trial consistently. That is precisely what happened recently with a Zantac cancer case that was set to go to trial next month. It was announced this week that this case has been settled. Unfortunately, the settlement terms are confidential.
- August 16, 2023: Many cases in the MDL have been dismissed. But there are still almost 15,000 lawsuits pending on the appeal as of yesterday.
- August 14, 2023: The appeal to the 11th Circuit has been filed in the MDL.
- July 19, 2023: The next Zantac lawsuit to go to trial will be on November 13, 2023, in California state court.
- June 21, 2023: Sanofi is not required to compensate Boehringer Ingelheim for any potential losses in the Zantac lawsuits in the United States after an arbitration between the companies decision this week. Still, these drug companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Sanofi, and Boehringer Ingelheim, face billions in exposure in potential settlement and verdict charges related to tens of thousands of remaining lawsuits in state court (and maybe a revived MDL).
- June 1, 2023: The next Zantac lawsuit is set to go to trial on July 24, 2023. A win for plaintiffs would completely change the momentum in this litigation.
- May 20, 2023: In Canada, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has ruled that a lawsuit against Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline lacked enough evidence to link the drug’s active ingredient, ranitidine, to cancer.
- May 24, 2023: A judge in Delaware has decided on how to proceed with 77,000 Zantac lawsuits filed in the state. Delaware Superior Court Judge Vivian Medinilla issued a case management order that delineates a process for selecting bellwether plaintiffs and establishes a trial precisely to determine if Zantac causes various forms of cancer.
- May 23, 2023: The federal court Zantac lawsuits were dismissed after a Daubert hearing in the MDL class action. There is a Sargon hearing in California state court on Wednesday. Sargon and Daubert are the courts performing its “gatekeeping” function to exclude speculative and unreliable expert testimony, ensuring expert opinions are based on a sound foundation of facts and analysis. The court must ensure that the expert possesses appropriate qualifications and that the evidence or opinion offered is based on scientifically valid reasoning and methodology. We should have won the Daubert hearing in the MDL. There is hope that this Sargon hearing will have a very different outcome.
- May 8, 2023: The notice of appeal was sent to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal. Is it a long road from here? Yes.
- March 26, 2023: A state court judge in California judge has denied Glaxo’s request to exclude expert testimony linking the drug to cancer from an upcoming trial. So the first Zantac trial is set for July 24, 2023. The plaintiff in the case, California resident James Goetz, claims that he developed bladder cancer from taking the drug. GSK shares fell by 3.6% on Friday in response to the news, which is crazy because few legal analysts predicted Glaxo would win. Still, this is a big win for plaintiffs who really needed a big win after a federal judge threw out all of the Zantac cases in U.S. federal court, finding the opinions of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses linking the drug to cancer were not backed by sound science. The ruling is on appeal, but there is not a lot of optimism.
- February 26, 2023: What the Zantac lawsuits really need is a significant verdict to reset the momentum. Well, now that will not happen. The start of the first trial related to claims that GSK’s Zantac caused cancer- a bladder cancer case, which is the best claim we have – has been delayed by five months. James Goetz, a California resident who alleges that he developed bladder cancer from taking Zantac, was set to bring the case to trial on Monday. Now the trial is pushed back to July 24, 2023.
- February 21, 2023: A judge in a Zantac cancer case in California is set to rule this week on the admissibility of expert evidence linking NDMA in Zantac to cancer. This is the same issue that led the Judge in the Zantac MDL to dismiss thousands of Zantac cases pending in federal courts. The case in California is set for trial next week. If the Judge allows the plaintiff to present his scientific causation evidence and the trial results in a victory for the plaintiff, it could breathe new life in the Zantac litigation.
- February 3, 2023; We often get asked about the prospects of success of the Zantac appeal. Honestly, we think they are low. The burden on appeal is a big hill to climb before one, some would argue, is a pro-defendant/pro-big business leaning court. So if you had a filed case in the MDL or you are on the registry, you are in a tough spot. We don’t want to convey false hope. Your chances for justice are dwindling. If you are not, and you have a new claim or a claim pending in state court, you are in a much stronger spot. State court judges have minds of their own, and they won’t mindlessly follow the opinion of a single judge.
- January 27, 2023: There will be a consolidated Zantac class action-type lawsuit, after all, albeit on a more limited scale. The New York State Litigation Coordinating Panel consolidated 40 state court Zantac claims and said future Zantac lawsuits in New York will also be consolidated.
- January 23, 2023: There will be no registry appeals. The tolling on these claims “will expire on or about April 5, 2023.” The judge will not – inexplicably to us – allow plaintiffs to bundle up complaints to perfect appeals. This means that plaintiffs must file a regular lawsuit with a standard filing fee to maintain a claim for appeal. Many lawyers and victims will not want to front this cost, and cases will be dismissed. Even if plaintiffs prevail on appeal, those registry plaintiffs who have not filed a lawsuit will be time-barred from bringing suit.
- January 17, 2023: The Zantac plaintiffs have a motion pending in the MDL that could significantly impact the fate of thousands of Zantac claimants. The MDL judge recently dismissed the 2,000 filed cases pending in the MDL based on a lack of admissible causation evidence. That ruling is being appealed, but if the appeal is successful, only those 2,000 active cases will get reinstated. The issue is what will happen to the thousands of additional Zantac plaintiffs who opted to register claims without filing suit. These claimants will not benefit from the appeal unless they all pay the $400 filing fee and immediately file suit. In reality, not every lawyer is willing to file a suit and front the filing fee in every case. The current motion asks the MDL judge to allow these Zantac cancer claims to be bundled for the appeal so that they will not be lost while that appeal is pending. A hearing on the motion was held last week. The judge needs to rule soon.
Zantac Cancer Lawsuit
Zantac (ranitidine) is an antacid that has been around since the 1980s and is available in prescription and over-the-counter forms. GlaxoSmithKline initially developed and released Zantac, but it was widely available in generic versions manufactured by various companies.
Zantac was used to treat gastroesophageal reflux disease and peptic ulcer disease. The drug was popular because it worked. But Zantac contained a hidden carcinogenic chemical. This has led to thousands of Zantac lawsuits by people who regularly used the drug and were subsequently diagnosed with cancer. There are more than 2100 Zantac lawsuits in federal court as of June 2022. But there are probably 30,000 more Zantac cancer claims where the patient has not filed a lawsuit but has used a procedural mechanism that allows Zantac patients to “file suit” without officially filing a Zantac lawsuit.
In 2017, Zantac was used regularly by 15 million people in the U.S. Many of these Zantac users took the drug every day for long periods under the assumption that it was perfectly safe.
In 2018, random quality testing found that the popular drug contained very high levels of a chemical called NDMA (N-Nitrosodimethylamine). NDMA is highly toxic to the human body and is a known carcinogen. The levels of NDMA in Zantac were so high that the FDA issued a public safety warning, and Zantac was promptly pulled off retail shelves across the country.
This quickly led to a wave of Zantac lawsuits by individuals claiming that their exposure to NDMA in Zantac caused them to develop cancer. Zantac lawsuits have been filed and consolidated into a Zantac MDL in the District of New Jersey.
The Core Zantac Claims
These Zantac suits claim the defendants could have tested Zantac for NDMA, warned the FDA, doctors, and Zantac patients of the concerns they should have had, shortened expiration dates, packaged this drug differently, and stored and transported Zantac at moderate heat and humidity levels.
The defendants should have known of the risk of NDMA in Zantac. The drug’s molecular structure would have put a reasonable drug manufacturer on notice of the drug’s propensity to degrade into NDMA. N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) is formed from N-nitroso (N) and Dimethylamine (DMA), and Zantac has both. So without any other compounds, it can degrade to produce NDMA.
Studies were also available to alert the defendants that heat and humidity could further compound the problem. The degradation with moisture or high temperatures can occur externally and inside a Zantac patient’s stomach. Moreover, Zantac, in combination with high nitrate foods, can cause further degradation, producing cancer-causing NDMA.
So the core of these claims is that Zantac breaks down into NDMA, and the defendants should have warned about the problem and issued a Zantac recall much sooner. Zantac turns into NDMA after it is produced. It breaks down in the Zantac patient’s stomach. It breaks down in combination with certain foods. It breaks down in the presence of heat and moisture. It even breaks down with the mere passage of time. So there is a cumulative effect of how NDMA degrades to cause cancer.
So let’s break that down for an individual Zantac patient. Zantac is typically taken one to two tablets of Ranitidine a day for years. One tablet of Zantac can contain over 3,000 times the FDA-acceptable daily limit of NDMA. So Zantac users were too staggering doses of NDMA over an extended period. Is anyone surprised that over 70,000 brought a Zantac claim alleging the drug caused their cancer?
Zantac Lawsuits Should Be Resolved in a Global Settlement
[Note: this was written before the MDL judge dismissed the federal court cases.]Our attorneys don’t know precisely what lawsuit individual settlement compensation payouts might be at this stage. But we can be certain that they will eventually be resolved in a global settlement. This is how all consolidated mass torts eventually get resolved (if they are not dismissed – that is not an unimportant caveat). (Update: that caveat now looms large in 2023, as we discuss above.)Since the formation of the Zantac MDL in 2019, the MDL judge has presided over a consolidated civil discovery process while more Zantac cases have continued to be filed. The discovery phase has focused on developing scientific causation evidence on both sides.
The discovery phase of the Zantac litigation will conclude next year, and then the litigation will move into the bellwether trial phase. This is where jury trials are held in a handful of sample Zantac cases.
The results of these test trials are used to facilitate settlement negotiations in which the defendants agree to pay a sum of money to resolve most of the Zantac lawsuits (except for the opt-outs). In mass torts, this is called a “global settlement.”
Example Zantac Lawsuit
For context, let’s look at a newly filed Zantac lawsuit for an example of the facts you will see in one of these claims.
New York resident Bennett Cohen became one of the newest plaintiffs in the Zantac litigation. Cohen filed a Complaint against a group of 13 defendants, including brand-names Zantac manufacturers and generic ranitidine manufacturers. The Complaint was filed directly in the Zantac MDL in the Southern District of Florida.
Cohen’s Complaint alleges that he regularly used brand-name Zantac and generic ranitidine in prescription and over-the-counter forms from 1995 to 2012. Cohen asserts that his regular use of Zantac and ranitidine over these 17 years directly led to his prostate cancer diagnosis in 2011. That is exceptionally long-term use which means this man’s cumulative exposure to ranitidine hydrochloride over time was likely very high.
Cohen now joins a group of 2,100 plaintiffs with pending cases in the Zantac MDL. Over 80,000 additional prospective plaintiffs have registered Zantac claims but have not yet filed their lawsuits (although many of them have now been dismissed). Bennett’s case was filed because the statute of limitations on his claims would have expired.
(Update: This case will be dismissed like all other cases in the MDL unless the MDL judge’s ruling is overturned, as discussed in the December 2022 updates above.)
What Will Zantac Settlement Amounts Look Like?
Here is a simplified summary of how global settlements work out in most mass torts like the Zantac litigation. Let’s say Acme Pharmaceutical is defending 20,000 lawsuits by plaintiffs claiming that Acme’s new drug caused them to develop cancer. After two years of consolidated discovery, 10 of the 20,000 cases are selected for “bellwether trials.” The plaintiffs pick 5 cases and Acme chooses 5 cases.
The first 3 of these bellwether cases go to trial. The first trial resulted in a $20 million verdict for the plaintiff. The second trial resulted in a defense verdict. The third trial ended with a $5 million verdict. Following the 3rd trial, Acme announces that it is ready to negotiate a settlement, with the remaining trials put on hold. Six months later, the MDL judge approved a global settlement under which Acme agrees to pay a total sum of $5 billion to settle all 20,000 pending cases.
If the $5 billion were divided evenly, each plaintiff would receive a gross payout of $250,000. But the settlement arrangement includes a complicated tiered points system in which each plaintiff is ranked based on the severity of their injuries. For the Zantac lawsuits, it would be the length of Zantac usage, the age of the plaintiff, and other factors. Plaintiffs ranked in the highest tiers get larger payouts and those in the lower settlement tiers get smaller settlement payouts.
This is an overly simplified example of what the global settlement in the Zantac litigation should eventually look like. The only thing we don’t know at this point is how much the defendants will have to pay out for the settlement.
The size of any individual Zantac settlement payout will depend on
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- how many Zantac lawsuits are pending at the time (how many cancers survive pretrial motions),
- how strong the causation evidence is, and
- the results of the first bellwether ranitidine trials.
Did the Defendants Know That Zantac Could Cause Cancer?
When Zantac came to market, there was already medical literature that Zantac, which has dimethylamine (“DMA”), could form NDMA, when combined with other substances.
Specifically, nitrate in our bodies could supply the “N” to turn DMA into NDMA. Bacteria and enzymes in the body reduce the nitrates found in food into nitrites, and many foods and preservatives contain nitrates.
So the defendant knew or should have known from the beginning that the DMA in Zantac could develop into NDMA.
How Awful Is NDMA for You?
NDMA is pure poison. This organic chemical forms in both industrial and natural processes. It is an N-nitrosamines, a family of potent carcinogens. The risk of NDMA has been long understood. Over 40 years ago, we learned that NDMA causes cancer in nearly every laboratory animal exposed to the chemical.
Is NDMA in Zantac from a Manufacturing Error?
A manufacturing defect does not cause the high levels of NDMA from Zantac. NDMA is a natural consequence of ingesting ranitidine, the active ingredient in Zantac. The Ranitidine molecule contains NDMA, and nitrate is also in Zantac and is also produced by the body. So every dosage of Zantac exposed the user to NDMA.
What Happens Now That the Zantac MDL Has Been Dismissed?
Plaintiffs have already noted their appeal of the MDL judge ruling dismissing all federal court Zantac lawsuits Victims who had not yet filed in the MDL will look for justice in state courts. Our law firm, like most firrms, is not accepting new Zantac cases.
Get a Zantac Lawyer
If you have developed one of these five types of cancer and suspect Zantac, contact our attorneys at Miller & Zois today. Our Zantac lawyers can investigate your case and evaluate whether you have a viable claim. Call 800-553-8082 or reach out for free online.
- Overview of Zantac lawsuits and the premise of these claims
- Why the Zantac lawsuit is in federal court