LA lawyer takes on one of Europe’s biggest drug producers

In 2018, Brent Wisner won nearly $300 million for a caregiver who developed cancer after using Roundup, a herbicide owned by Germany’s Bayer since its acquisition that year of US agrochemical group Monsanto.

The then-34-year-old and largely untested lawyer’s story of victory had enough traction against the odds for Netflix to pick up the film rights at Cannes last month, with Hollywood star Glen Powell poised to- and takes the role. Wisner’s father, an environmentalist and screenwriter, helped write the script.

After following up his initial victory against Bayer by obtaining a $2 billion jury verdict against the company in 2019, Wisner is now seeking another Big Pharma scalp: British drugmaker GSK. The company lost £7 billion in value on Monday after a Delaware judge’s ruling last week left it exposed to US jury trials over its alleged cancer-causing heartburn treatment Zantac.

Wisner says GSK, which is appealing the decision, faces a “Monsanto-like situation” if it refuses to settle about 70,000 remaining cases.

“If they want to look smart and avoid the crazy amount of liability coming down, now is the time to act – a prolonged fight will make it more expensive,” he told the Financial Times.

A child actor in television commercials, Wisner said being “charismatic and engaging” on screen helped her in her legal career, which also required an element of “performance.”

After graduating from law school at Georgetown University in 2010, his father’s friend Michael Baum convinced him to join Baum Hedlund’s plaintiffs’ firm in 2012, suing pharmaceutical and consumer companies.

Wisner had worked only a handful of jury trials before his big break came, when the incompetence of first veteran attorney Michael Miller and then his deputy left the case in the hands of the understudy who helped prepare him.

“Monsanto and the other lawyers were thinking, ‘Who is this kid?'” Wisner said. Videos of his closing statements in the Monsanto trial show him pacing the courtroom earnestly praising the jurors and decrying the company’s conviction.

Those who saw him at work describe a zealous and professional vigilante. According to Mikal Watts, a trial attorney in the Monsanto and Zantac lawsuits, Wisner is “an extremely talented guy.” Baum, effusive about his “high quality” pro partner and Jennifer Moore, the other co-lead attorney in the Zantac case, said Wisner made the cases “fun.”

Wisner’s $2 billion victory made him the youngest US attorney to win a multi-billion dollar jury verdict. Although it was reduced to $87 million, the Monsanto deal proved exceptionally expensive for Bayer.

The stock market capitalization of the German conglomerate fell to 28 billion euros, well below the 63 billion dollars paid for Monsanto. Bayer settled most of the other cases for $10.9 billion in 2020, but continues to face herbicide-related lawsuits.

Wisner, who was elevated last year to managing partner at the renowned Wisner Baum, declined to comment on how much he personally earned from his work on the Monsanto case.

Delaware Judge Vivian Medinilla’s decision in the Zantac case last Friday did not side with the plaintiffs’ scientists, but will allow jurors to hear experts from both sides debate whether the drug causes cancer. “It again emphasized the power and importance of a jury,” Wisner said.

Others are less positive about the role of U.S. tort attorneys in racking up thousands of cases on a “no win, no fee” basis, using what critics say are cherry-picked scientific claims to generate big profits.

“The plaintiffs’ attorney industry is big business, and Wisner is a prime example,” said one industry insider. “It’s not about justice or science, it’s about chasing the next big buck.”

X-Ante, a company that tracks litigation ad spending, says law firms have paid about $58 million on TV ads calling for Zantac complaints since 2019, when tests by a Connecticut lab found carcinogenic NDMA in the drug .

Unlike the Roundup cases, a federal ruling in Florida threw out the plaintiffs’ evidence on Zantac, finding in 2022 that the science linking the heartburn treatment to cancer was based on “unsound methodologies.” GSK points to 16 studies that show no reliable link between the drug and increased cancer risk.

Wisner retired from multi-district litigation in 2020 to focus on state courts. Analysts estimate that GSK’s liability is up to $3.5 billion. Pfizer, Sanofi and Boehringer Ingelheim, which have marketed the drug for a shorter period of time, face less exposure.

A GSK investor described the proceedings as “scary and unpredictable”, adding that “US tort law is anti-science and anti-companies trying to do good”.

Wisner dismisses this argument as “just nonsense”. “If I’m anti-science, then why do I spend all my time talking to the jury about science?” he asked, pointing to GSK lab studies from 1981 that discovered NDMA when Zantac was combined with high levels of nitrites that were not shared with the US Food and Drug Administration until 2019.

GSK said natural levels of nitrites in the stomach do not produce the same results.

Wisner is also candid about engaging in the self-promotion necessary among modern lawyers. In addition to the ads, Wisner Baum uses its TikTok channel to highlight the alleged carcinogenic properties of Roundup and Zantac and the links between baby food and ADHD.

“Part of our job is to protect our clients not just in the courtroom, but outside as well,” he said, describing Wisner Baum’s ads as a “guerrilla warfare operation” against the “better-oiled machine” of some groups such as GSK and Bayer. .

The companies may have more resources, but as Wisner prepares for future lawsuits, he says the Monsanto verdict has “fundamentally changed” the way he is treated by defense lawyers and judges.

“It’s the rare moment when these billion-dollar corporations and these fancy law firms and fancy judges and courtrooms are humbled by 12 ordinary people making a decision,” he said. “It’s pure.”

Additional reporting by Oliver Barnes in San Diego