Sanofi has reportedly agreed to pay over $100 million to settle around 4,000 cases filed over the safety of its heartburn drug Zantac. According to Bloomberg, the settlement involves payments of around $25,000 per claim. The lawsuits alleged that Sanofi failed to adequately warn consumers that one of Zantac’s ingredients, ranitidine, could produce the carcinogen NDMA.
The settlement primarily applies to state cases filed outside of Delaware. A Delaware judge will decide whether to allow certain scientific evidence underlying the claims for another roughly 70,000 cases. In 2022, a Florida judge dismissed more than 5,000 cases due to flawed scientific evidence.
A Sanofi spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company was settling the cases not because it believed the claims had merit, but rather to save the company the expense and distraction of ongoing litigation.
Zantac has been marketed by several companies over the years, including Pfizer, GSK, and Boehringer Ingelheim. GSK, which developed the drug, has settled similar suits in California, but the terms were not disclosed. A lawsuit filed against GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim is expected to go to trial on April 30 in Chicago. Bloomberg reports that makers of generic versions of Zantac are also facing lawsuits.
Zantac was pulled off shelves in 2019 amid concerns that ranitidine could produce NDMA, a carcinogen. The product was later put back on the market without the ingredient. Sanofi announced in early April that it planned to settle around 4,000 cases filed over Zantac outside of the state of Delaware.
