A strategic rift has emerged among plaintiffs lawyers on how to pursue lawsuits over recalled heartburn medication Zantac, prompting lawsuits brought on behalf of tens of thousands of people to land in state courts across the country.
Nearly 200,000 people claim Zantac, recalled in 2019, caused a host of various cancers. But three years later, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg, who is overseeing the multidistrict litigation in the Southern District of Florida, imposed new deadlines to file their lawsuits. At the same time, plaintiffs lawyers on the multidistrict litigation’s leadership team chose to limit their experts to those specializing in five specific types of cancer. As a result, many prominent plaintiffs firms, such as Los Angeles-based Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, San Antonio’s Watts Guerra and Chicago’s Keller Postman, have turned to state courts, particularly in Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California.
