Company logo of pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is seen at their Stevenage facility, Britain October 26, 2020.
Matthew Childs | Reuters
LONDON — Shares of British pharmaceuticals giant GSK plunged 9% Monday, after a U.S. court ruled that scientific evidence may very well be presented as a stack of lawsuits referring to the discontinued heartburn drug Zantac move forward.
The Delaware State Court late on Friday ruled that plaintiffs’ expert witnesses could testify within the roughly 75,000 cases alleging the once-popular drug ranitidine — sold under the brand name Zantac within the U.S. — may cause cancer.
“This case has all the time been about getting the science in front of a jury,” Brent Wisner, lawyer on the firm Wisner Baum which is representing most of the plaintiffs, said in a press release.
The dispute has been rumbling for years and involves quite a few pharmaceutical firms. Zantac was sold by GSK as a prescription drug within the Nineteen Eighties before transitioning to an over-the-counter medicine, and following its patent expiry within the Nineties has been sold by firms including France’s Sanofi, U.S. firm Pfizer and Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim.
The drug was withdrawn from European and U.S. markets in 2019 and 2020 after regulators conducted a security review which raised concerns it contained a probable carcinogen called NDMA.
The businesses involved deny there’s a scientific consensus that the drug might be linked to any later development of cancers.
In a press release Friday, GSK said it disagreed with the most recent Delaware ruling and would immediately seek an appeal.
It said the choice contradicted the federal court’s multi-district litigation ruling in December 2022, which dismissed all cases alleging five cancer types. It added that the court decision only related as to if the methodology utilized by the plaintiffs’ experts was sufficiently reliable to be presented as evidence at trial.
“Following the 16 epidemiological studies taking a look at human data regarding the usage of ranitidine, the scientific consensus is that there isn’t a consistent or reliable evidence that ranitidine increases the chance of any cancer,” GSK said.
While the bulk are in Delaware, a smaller numbers of cases against various firms are being heard in California, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
Analysts at Jefferies had in late May flagged a possible tailwind for GSK after an Illinois jury found GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim weren’t chargeable for colorectal cancer in the primary Zantac case to succeed in trial.
GSK, the corporate most exposed to the cases, could face settlement costs from $1 billion to greater than $3 billion, based on a variety of analyst notes cited by Reuters.
Sanofi, which is called in roughly 25,000 of the 75,000 cases, said in its own statement Friday it was upset with the choice to not exclude the plaintiffs’ experts from the cases and that it might also appeal. Sanofi shares were 1% lower on Monday.
Pfizer told CNBC Monday it was implicated in a “fraction” of the Delaware cases and had resolved a “substantial number” of cases during which it was named as a defendant.
“While we’ve great sympathy for plaintiffs in these cases, there isn’t a reliable scientific evidence that Zantac, which was reviewed and approved by FDA, causes cancer. Pfizer has not sold a Zantac product in greater than 15 years and did so just for a limited time frame, nor has Pfizer ever manufactured a Zantac product,” the corporate said in a press release.
The Financial Times last month reported that Pfizer agreed to pay between $200 million and $250 million to settle greater than 10,000 Zantac lawsuits. CNBC has not independently confirmed the quantity.
CNBC has contacted Boehringer Ingelheim for comment.
