At a hearing last month in the multidistrict litigation over Zantac, plaintiffs lawyer Mikal Watts praised the use of a registry that now has collected 140,000 claims from individuals insisting the heartburn medication caused them to get cancer.

The claims far exceed the 828 lawsuits pending over Zantac as of Sept. 15, according to statistics from the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. But the registry is a way for U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg, who is overseeing the Zantac multidistrict litigation in West Palm Beach, Florida, to keep track of the claims that are out there—whether they are filed or not.