GSK scratched another Zantac lawsuit off the list with a confidential settlement in Illinois as it continues to work through the mountain of personal injury litigation related to the heartburn pill.
The company reached an agreement with plaintiff Martin Gross to resolve the case, which was originally scheduled for a June 5 trial. The plaintiff had alleged his prostate cancer came as a result of using Zantac.
GSK “does not admit any liability in this settlement,” the company said in a recent statement.
“Following the 16 epidemiological studies looking at human data regarding the use of ranitidine, the scientific consensus is that there is no consistent or reliable evidence that ranitidine increases the risk of any cancer,” the drugmaker added. “GSK will continue to vigorously defend itself and manage this litigation in the best interests of the company and shareholders."
The Gross lawsuit is one of several that had moved toward trials in Illinois. In May, GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim notched a win in the state after a Chicago jury rejected Angela Valadez’s colon cancer claim, for which she was seeking $640 million.
Then in June, another Illinois plaintiff dropped her case in a voluntary dismissal just before the trial date. In that case, GSK “did not pay anything,” the company stressed in a statement at the time. That trial was set to kick off on the same day as the Gross case.
Another Illinois trial over prostate cancer claims is slated to begin in July.
The long-running Zantac (ranitidine) legal saga began when quality assurance lab Valisure initially linked the med to the possible carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) in 2019, resulting in the FDA ordering the removal of all ranitidine products from the market in 2020.
Now, GSK faces tens of thousands of Zantac claims. The Valadez suit was the first personal injury case to go to trial, but new claims are still popping up. Recently, Valisure accused GSK of knowing Zantac’s alleged risks all along and purposely hiding its knowledge from the FDA.
In Delaware, a judge recently allowed more than 75,000 lawsuits to move forward, marking a major setback for GSK and other drugmakers. GSK and the other Zantac manufacturers all expressed their plans to appeal the ruling.
In contrast, 50,000 claims in Florida were thrown out at the end of 2022 when a judge rejected the science used to back up the plaintiffs’ arguments.