The Delaware Supreme Court will hear the drug makers’ appeal to end the Zantac lawsuits

Delaware’s highest court said Tuesday it will hear an appeal by GSK and other drugmakers seeking to end more than 70,000 lawsuits alleging that Zantac, the discontinued heartburn drug, caused cancer.

GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi and Boehringer Ingelheim are asking the court to overturn a lower court judge’s order allowing plaintiffs in the lawsuits to provide expert testimony about the alleged link to cancer, which the companies say is not supported by the methods solid science. Without this testimony, the lawsuits cannot go forward.

There has been no trial or final judgment in any of the Zantac lawsuits in Delaware. The state supreme court hears appeals before final judgment only when it finds that exceptional circumstances exist.

Related: GSK to seek dismissal of Florida case against heartburn drug Zantac

GSK said in a statement that it was “delighted that the Supreme Court is of the view that such circumstances are present here”.

Jennifer Moore and Brent Wisner, attorneys for the plaintiffs, said in a joint statement that they are “confident that the (Supreme) Court will reach the same conclusion as the trial court.”

Business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, asked the state Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that the lower court’s ruling would turn traditionally business-friendly Delaware into a “hotbed” of mass litigation. if he were allowed to stand.

Related: GSK settles another heartburn lawsuit in Illinois

First approved by US regulators in 1983, Zantac became the world’s best-selling drug in 1988 and one of the first to surpass $1 billion in annual sales. It was sold at different times by the four companies, all of which faced thousands of lawsuits.

The litigation began after the US Food and Drug Administration in 2020 asked manufacturers to pull the drug off the market over concerns that ranitidine, the active ingredient in Zantac and generic versions of the drug, could degrade into NDMA, a carcinogen , over time or when exposed to heat.

So far, three Zantac cases have gone to trial, all in Illinois, with two ending in verdicts for the defense and one with a hung jury.

Related: Industry groups back drugmakers’ appeal in Zantac cancer lawsuits

Drugmakers won a significant victory in 2022 when a federal judge in Florida rejected plaintiffs’ expert witnesses in about 50,000 cases on the grounds that they did not use reliable scientific methods. Although the experts were different from those at issue in Delaware, the legal arguments presented by both sides were similar.

Some of the Florida cases are being contested, and the vast majority of the remaining cases are in Delaware.

Sanofi agreed to settle about 4,000 cases against it, while Pfizer reportedly agreed to settle more than 10,000. The companies have also settled some individual cases before trial.

(Reporting by Pierson in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Jonathan Oatis)