LOS ANGELES – Attorneys from the Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman & Moore Law Group are suing the maker of Zantac, a heartburn medicine, alleging the medication has a toxic carcinogenic substance, N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), that causes cancer.
“I can say with 100% certainty that if these cancer-stricken people were told, if they were given the choice to avoid a product that could cause them to develop cancer, they never would have taken Zantac,” attorney R. Brent Wisner was quoted on the Baum Hedlund website.
The Baum Hedlund firm has filed a class acgion on behalf of 40 clients and their families, claiming they developed cancer as a result of using the stomach medicine Zantac. The complaints allege the company knowingly produced a medicine with carcinogens in it that should not have been ingested in the human body, fabricated test results to gain approvals and failed to warn consumers of the dangers of the drug.
Zantac has been a popular over-the-counter medication used by people to treat acid reflux, heartburn and other throat and stomach conditions. The drug has been on the market since the 1980s.
The attorneys said the preparation contains NDMA levels up to 3,000 times greater than limits set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is unsafe, according to the website.
The makers of Zantac, Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK), headquartered in the United Kingdom, declined comment on the impending litigation. However, a spokesperson for the company added that patient safety has always been a priority.
On June 8, the Baum Hedland legal team submitted a petition to consolidate the case under the designation of a Judicial Counsel Coordinated Proceeding (JCCP). Similar to a federal multidistrict litigation case (MDL), a JCCP is intended to streamline the process, providing unified management during the pre-trial and trial phases of the litigation.
Over 230 cases against Zantac have been filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and more cases are expected to be filed against the product maker across the country.
Wisner was earlier involved in lawsuits against Monsanto for its weed-killing product Roundup. He said he and his fellow attorneys were able to obtain over $2.4 billion in verdicts in those cases.
Coordinating the pending litigation is the first step in prompting the company to own up and do right by his clients. Wisner added he expects to get the case to trial in a California state court soon.
In 2019, representatives of GSK informed the UK Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency they were recalling Zantac products due to possible NDMA contamination.