WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Legal Newsline) - Plaintiffs trying to escape a court hostile to their Zantac-related claims and flee to Delaware state court have lost their effort.
Florida federal judge Robin Rosenberg on June 21 refused to allow four claims to proceed in Delaware, where a judge overseeing tens of thousands of cases is letting in evidence that Rosenberg has deemed unreliable.
The litigation over Zantac claims, when heated to 266 degrees Fahrenheit and exposed to a lethal amount of salt, the heartburn drug turns into cancer-causing NDMA. Lawsuits quickly followed testing by the lab Valisure and expert opinions based on those findings were thrown out of a Florida federal multidistrict litigation proceeding by Rosenberg, effectively dooming some 50,000 cases.
Even the FDA found fault with Valisure's testing methods. But Delaware Superior Court Judge Vivian Medinilla recently reached the opposite conclusion in her handling of about 75,000 cases, writing the jury can sort out the science that plaintiffs lawyers apparently paid millions of dollars for.
Four plaintiffs tried to avoid the Florida MDL by adding defendants beyond the makers of ranitidine products, like GlaxoSmithKline, to defeat diversity jurisdiction for the federal court. Rosenberg's ruling says they were fraudulently joined.
"(E)very claimant had to choose whether to certify under penalty of estoppel that his or her claim would be filed in federal court," Rosenberg wrote.
"No claimant was required to choose federal court. But if a Claimant did choose to certify for federal court, that commitment was binding."
Lawyers in the Florida MDL created a registry to help the court undersize the size of the litigation. Those with claims who chose to participate in the registry had the statute of limitations tolled but were required to file their cases in federal court.
In 2021, a dispute about the commitment to file in federal court arose. Plaintiffs were suing in-state retailers, claiming their medical officers should have known Zantac could turn into NDMA, in order to defeat diversity jurisdiction.
Rosenberg found they were fraudulently joined to the cases, which were filed in Delaware state court before the defendants moved them to the Florida federal MDL. Rosenberg then issued an order telling claimants in the registry to make a decision on forum.
If a claimant certified in the registry, he or she was agreeing to file in federal court. If not, the possibility for state court jurisdiction remained.
Eighty percent of claimants certified for federal court, but some still tried to file in Delaware state court.
One case has gone to trial, with an Illinois jury rejecting the plaintiff's arguments.