Latest Zantac trial against Boehringer Ingelheim ends with hung jury
By Brendan Pierson
Nov 22 (Reuters) -A trial ended with a hung jury on Thursdayin a California man's lawsuit alleging Boehringer Ingelheim's discontinued heartburn drug Zantac gave him bladder cancer.
The jury in California state court was evenly divided on whether to hold Boehringer Ingelheim liable, according to lawyers for plaintiff John Russell. It was the third time that a Zantac trial against the privately held German drugmaker ended with a deadlocked jury.
Russell's lawyers, Brent Wisner and Jennifer Moore, said in a joint statement that they "stand ready to retry this case immediately."
"Boehringer dodged a bullet today - that won't happen again," they said.
Boehringer Ingelheim in a statement said it was "unfortunate" that the jury had not reached a verdict.
"However, once again, plaintiffs have failed to convince another jury of the merits of their baseless claims regarding Zantac," it said.
Russell accused the company, which sold Zantac from 2006 to 2017 of failing to warn that the drug's active ingredient ranitidine could degrade into a cancer-causing substance called NDMA.
First approved by U.S. regulators in 1983, Zantac became the world's best-selling medicine in 1988 and one of the first to top $1 billion in annual sales. The drug was sold at different times by Boehringer Ingelheim, GSK GSK.L, Pfizer PFE.N and Sanofi SASY.PA.
Lawsuits against the companies began piling up in both state and federal courts after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked manufacturers in 2020 to pull Zantac off the market. The agency cited concerns that ranitidine could degrade into NDMA, a carcinogen, over time or when exposed to heat.
GSK last month agreed to settle about 80,000 Zantac lawsuits, representing most of the litigation against it, for $2.2 billion. Pfizer has also agreed to settle most of the outstanding cases against it, according to its most recent financial statement. Sanofiin April announced that it was settling about 4,000 cases.
Plaintiffs have not won any of the five trials that have been held so far over Zantac. In addition to the two previous deadlocks in cases against Boehringer Ingelheim, two trials have ended in victories for the defense - one forGSK and Boehringer Ingelheim, and one for GSK alone.
A majority of the remaining state court cases are in Delaware, where a judge in June allowed plaintiffs to present crucial expert testimony that Zantac caused cancer. The drug companies are appealing the judge's ruling to the Delaware Supreme Court, arguing that the expert testimony was not backed by sound science.
The companies had successfully used that argument to get about 50,000 lawsuits thrown out of Florida federal court in 2022. About 14,000 of those cases are being appealed.
A drug currently sold under the name Zantac 360 uses a different active ingredient and contains no ranitidine.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York)
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