Cook County jurors declined to find two pharmaceutical companies responsible for an elderly Brookfield woman’s colon cancer. She sued them alleging the popular heartburn drug Zantac was a culprit for her disease.
Jurors deliberated for just over four hours from Wednesday afternoon to Thursday morning. The three-week trial — a first of thousands of similar cases nationwide to appear before a jury — wrapped up Wednesday. Lawyers laid out two starkly different arguments in their final pitches to the jury of nine women and three men.
Throughout the trial, lawyers for 89-year-old Angela Valadez shared how her life was turned upside down after she was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2015. They also alleged that the active ingredient in Zantac, called ranitidine, degrades into the cancer-causing substance NDMA, or nitrosodimethylamine.
On the defense side, attorneys representing the drugmakers GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim repeatedly emphasized the safety and effectiveness of Zantac. They said the real cause of Valadez’s cancer was a host of other health factors and the fact that she neglected to get a colonoscopy until she was 80 years old.
The jury did agree Valadez proved she took Zantac for nearly 20 years, but they did not find it was the cause of her cancer. She was seeking $640 million in damages from the two companies.
Jurors were tasked with deciding whether GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim failed to warn consumers about the dangers of consuming Zantac, whether they were negligent in how they handled the drug and if the companies negligently misrepresented the product. They also had to determine if the drug was a cause, but not the only cause, of Valadez’s cancer and if she was also liable for not following doctor’s orders to get a colonoscopy sooner.
Attorneys for both sides were silent as the verdict was read. They all shook hands once the jury was dismissed. Valadez was not in the courtroom.
Mikal Watts, one of the attorneys representing Valadez, said he respected the jury’s decision and appreciated their service.
“We have more Zantac trials coming up. This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Watts told reporters outside the courtroom. “There’s going to be a lot of juries that look at the facts, and we are confident that future juries will agree that GSK, Boehringer Ingelheim and other purveyors of the drug have caused a lot of damage to different members of the American public. But it’s a case-by-case evaluation, so this is just one step in a long process.”
In December 2022, a federal judge in Florida dismissed roughly 50,000 claims because “no scientist outside this litigation” concluded the drug causes cancer. More trials are scheduled in Cook County for similar claims from people who used Zantac and developed cancer. Trials are coming up in June, July, September and November, Watts said.
In separate statements, both companies celebrated the verdict and vowed to “vigorously defend” themselves in the remaining cases.
“While Boehringer Ingelheim sympathizes with Mrs. Valadez, the outcome of this case is entirely consistent with the totality of the scientific evidence — including numerous recently conducted epidemiological studies — which shows that Zantac does not cause any type of cancer,” the company said in a statement.
“GSK welcomes today’s jury verdict in the Valadez case in Illinois state court finding in GSK’s favour in the first Zantac case to go to trial,” a GSK spokesperson said in a statement. “This outcome is consistent with the scientific consensus that there is no consistent or reliable evidence that ranitidine increases the risk of any cancer.”
Throughout their respective cases, lawyers presented conflicting science and studies on ranitidine and NDMA, brought to the stand paid experts with backgrounds in epidemiology and drug quality control, presented a crash course in chemistry and walked the jurors through the minutiae of drug manufacturing regulations in the U.S. and Europe.
During the trial, Valadez said she took Zantac and its generic version daily for about 18 years. She developed colon cancer in 2015 at 80 years old and underwent surgery to remove a tumor. She’s remained cancer-free since.
Following her diagnosis and surgery, she told the jury she’s dealt with uncontrollable diarrhea, a humiliating reality that prevents her from living a normal life.
Watts argued that Zantac risked degrading into NDMA, a carcinogen found in lab animals and humans, when it was exposed to hot and humid conditions. He referenced multiple studies throughout the trial, but he also emphasized that neither company had conducted long-term maintenance studies on Zantac.
The defense acknowledged that ranitidine can degrade into NDMA, but not at levels that would pose a risk to humans. Their experts pointed out that NDMA is a substance people encounter every day in the air, water and food. No medical society or science organization says Zantac causes cancer, they said.
Zantac first came on the market in 1983. It soon became the world’s best selling drug in 1988, and was one of the first top $1 billion in annual sales. It was developed by a forerunner of GSK and later sold the over-the-counter version to Pfizer in 1998. Boehringer Ingelheim bought the drug in 2006 and sold it in 2017.
In 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked drugmakers to pull Zantac and its generics off the market after NDMA was found in samples of the drug. Thousands of lawsuits started piling up in federal and state courts.
The FDA later found there was no danger posed to Zantac users, but the drug has remained off the market since. A different version of the heartburn medicine, called Zantac 360, is currently sold, but it does not contain ranitidine.
