GSK Plc reached a settlement with a man who claimed the drugmaker’s blockbuster heartburn medication Zantac caused his cancer, heading off the first such case set to go to trial in the US.
The parties reached a confidential settlement and the case filed in a California state court will be dismissed, GSK said in a statement Friday. The company said it isn’t admitting any liability in the settlement and will continue to defend itself in all other cases related to the drug.
The trial had been expected to start next month. James Goetz, a regular Zantac user for years, sued GSK after the drug was found in 2019 to contain a probable carcinogen called NDMA. The US Food and Drug Administration forced Zantac and its generic versions off the market in 2020 after determining that NDMA hadn’t been introduced into the drug, but formed in the medication itself, either during storage or at elevated temperatures.
Goetz’s trial was the first of four bellwether Zantac cases that plaintiffs’ lawyers Brent Wisner and Jennifer Moore were set to bring to court in California. Wisner and Moore are known for large verdicts they won against Bayer AG on behalf of people who claimed the company’s herbicide Roundup caused their cancers.
Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Pfizer Inc. and Sanofi also sold Zantac over the years and settled Goetz’s case in December. GSK, which developed the drug more than four decades ago, had data since the early 1980s indicating the drug may be dangerous but kept quiet about it until 2019.
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