Zantac

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Not long ago we published a blogpost, “New California Ranitidine Litigation Order Makes A Huge Mess Of Everything” about a California trial court decision that created, out of whole cloth, what it called a “hybrid theory” of strict liability that jumbled together elements of the long-established – and long separate – concepts of design and manufacturing defect, while sprinkling in the negligence concept of intent.  See In re Rantidine Cases, 2025 WL 2796831 (Cal. Super. Sept. 15, 2025).  As a result, the court allowed a “manufacturing” defect that was uniform across all units of the product, because it construed plaintiffs’ attack on the defendants’ manufacturing processes as a manufacturing defect.

In this post we will attempt to describe just how far out of bounds this “hybrid theory” really is.Continue Reading California Design vs. Manufacturing Defects – Neer the Twain Shall Meet

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Add Connecticut to the list of Zantac multi-plaintiff losses, following the Florida multidistrict litigation (our “Zantac Chronicles” series of posts, and the Delaware Supreme Court).  Only this time the several hundred Connecticut plaintiffs that were dismissed never even reached the absurd causation allegations that doomed the MDL and Delaware cases.  Rather, these Connecticut plaintiffs didn’t even have a means to establish personal jurisdiction over the non-Connecticut defendants they sued.  Bacher v. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 2025 WL 2463143 (Conn. Super. Aug. 22, 2025).Continue Reading Hundreds of Non-Resident Zantac Plaintiffs Run Out of Connecticut

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This post is from the non-Reed Smith, non-Dechert, and non-Holland & Knight side of the blog. 

We have covered the ranitidine litigation before. As we explained in prior posts (including here and here), plaintiffs allege that ranitidine, the active ingredient in Zantac, breaks down into N-Nitrosodimethylamine (“NDMA”), particularly at higher temperatures.  NDMA is a known carcinogen and a ubiquitous substance present in the environment and in all manner of foods including bacon, beer, and cheese.  Readers will remember that in a sweeping, 341-page opinion, the MDL court cut the head off the federal Zantac litigation by excluding plaintiffs’ experts.  But other parts of the snake keep slithering. Continue Reading Delaware Zantac Court Fails to Keep the Gate

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What follows is from the non-Dechert side of the blog.

The history of the Zantac MDL has been one novel claim after another from the plaintiffs’ side.  Fortunately, the vast majority of those ideas have gotten nowhere.  That’s what most recently happened in In re Zantac (Ranitidine) Products Liability Litigation, ___ F.R.D. ___, 2023 WL 1797264 (S.D. Fla. Feb. 7, 2023).  The plaintiffs filed something entitled “Expedited Motion to Permit Multi-Plaintiff Complaints for Registry Claimants.”  This was the plaintiffs’ attempt to avoid paying filing fees for around 58,000 “registry claimants” − who are now obligated to make up their minds and file their complaints – or forever hold their peace.Continue Reading Zantac MDL Zaps Crazy Consolidation Claims

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What follows is from the non-Dechert side of the Blog.

In the Zantac MDL, the plaintiffs’ causation problems were plainly visible on the horizon, as we mentioned in our post last year about the Zantac ruling on medical monitoring, In re Zantac (Ranitidine) Products Liability Litigation, 546 F. Supp.3d 1152 (S.D. Fla. 2021).  The Zantac MDL plaintiffs’ claims regarding risk of injury and exposure levels to purported ranitidine-derived nitrosamines (“NDMA” for short) seemed not only trivial, but in many ways bizarre (use of extreme temperatures and other parameters).  They even relied on a retracted study.  That’s why we referred to the “wheels coming off” the plaintiffs’ scientific case in that post.

Now the plaintiffs’ wheels are fully off in Zantac MDL – as we mentioned before, all of their causation experts for the five types of cancer that plaintiffs themselves considered the most plausible have been excluded under F.R. Evid. 702, and summary judgment entered.  In re Zantac (Ranitidine) Products Liability Litigation, ___ F. Supp.3d ___, 2022 WL 17480906 (S.D. Fla. Dec. 6, 2022).  This is a lengthy opinion, 341 pages in slip form.  To keep this post as short as possible, we’ll be summarizing (at best) large parts of it.Continue Reading Zantac Chronicles – Concluding Chapters in the MDL

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In a 341-page opinion, In re Zantac (Ranitidine) Products Liability Litigation, 9:20-md-02924-RLR, slip op. (S.D. Fla. Dec. 6, 2022), the MDL court held that all of the Zantac plaintiffs’ general causation experts (concerning five cancer types) failed to meet the admissibility standards of Fed. R. Evid. 702. Consequently the court granted the defendants’ motions…

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This post is from the non-Dechert side of the blog.

Our latest Zantac litigation decision is not from the Florida MDL, but rather a standalone case in Maryland − Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. GlaxoSmithKline, LLC, 2022 WL 537004 (Md. Cir. Jan. 28, 2022).  It’s a split decision, and depending on which…

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Today, we chronicle two more decisions from the Zantac MDL.  Once again, kudos to this MDL transferee judge for outstanding willingness to tackle legal issues, and decide them, at an early stage of the litigation.  Because we’ve gone through these issues before, here and here, we discuss these latest rulings in one post.

Chronicle …

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