by Brendan Pearson

LONDON: A Delaware judge rejected a request. GSK and others Drug manufacturers To Request The decision allowed more than 70,000 lawsuits that claimed the heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer to proceed.

decision given by Judge Vivian Medinilla The Delaware Superior Court’s ruling means that drugmakers, including Pfizer, Sanofi And Boehringer IngelheimGSK will have to approach the Delaware Supreme Court directly for permission to appeal. GSK said it has already submitted its appeal to that court.

If the state high court refuses to take the appeal, that would clear the way for the Zantac lawsuits to be heard.

“Judge Medinilla resoundingly rejected GSK, Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, and Sanofi’s effort to abolish the jury system in Delaware,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Jennifer Moore.

GSK said in a statement, “The scientific consensus remains that there is no consistent or reliable evidence that ranitidine increases the risk of any cancer.” Ranitidine is the active ingredient in the now-discontinued drug.

The lawsuits began when the US Food and Drug Administration in 2020 asked manufacturers to remove the drug from the market due to concerns that ranitidine could turn into a cancer-causing chemical called NDMA over time or when exposed to heat.

The drugmakers say Medinilla should have prevented plaintiffs from presenting expert testimony that Zantac can cause cancer, as a federal judge did in 2022 in about 50,000 claims centralized in Florida.

The plaintiff’s case depends on that testimony, and the trial cannot proceed without it.

Industry groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, supported the drugmakers’ appeal in a petition filed last month, saying acceptance of the Medinilla decision loosened standards of evidence in the traditionally business-friendly state and threatened to make the state “a hotbed of product-liability and mass-tort litigation.”

Medinilla wrote Monday that she did not adopt a different standard from the federal judge in Florida, but rather reached a different conclusion about the evidence in the case.

First approved in 1983, Zantac became the world’s best-selling drug in 1988 and the first to surpass $1 billion in annual sales. It was originally marketed by a predecessor of GSK and was later sold to successively other companies.

Most of the pending cases are in Delaware. Only one case, against GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim in Illinois, has gone to trial, where the companies won last month. (Reporting by Brendan Pearson in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)