Philadelphia City Hall in Downtown Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA – The spousal link that had plaintiffs lawyers calling on a Philadelphia judge to step away from shaky Zantac-causes-cancer lawsuits has been eliminated.
Judge Joshua Roberts announced Nov. 9 that the only case against drug-maker Apotex has been settled, declaring that requests for his recusals should be dismissed now too. His wife, Shannon McClure, is a partner at Blank Rome, which represented Apotex.
This led to the firm Keller Postman to move for his recusal from all cases in the Zantac program in Philadelphia’s Complex Litigation Center. There are currently 609 lawsuits awaiting a ruling on whether experts disqualified elsewhere will be able to tell jurors that Zantac’s active ingredient, ranitidine, can turn into cancer-causing NDMA in the human stomach.
Apotex’s settlement was of a minor’s claim in a case titled Hilbert. It was pursued by the firm Anapol Weiss, which never moved for Roberts’ recusal.
“Keller Postman (which includes any plaintiff represented by Keller Postman) had no right (i) to pursue a motion to recuse a non-party in Jimenez, as Apotex was never a defendant in Jimenez, or (ii) to pursue a motion in Hilbert, as Keller Postman is not counsel in Hilbert,” Roberts wrote.
“The Court further emphasizes that it has always been – and remains to be the case – that the undersigned, after a conscientious determination, concludes that I can manage the Zantac Mass Tort in an impartial manner free of personal bias or interest in the outcome.”
Roberts, as mass torts leader, oversees pretrial matters but will not preside over actual trials, should they occur. The Zantac cases have a major pretrial matter – the credibility of expert testimony linking ranitidine to cancer.
Judges in Delaware state court and Florida federal court have combined to toss more than 100,000 claims because they are based on expert testimony that is unreliable. The lawsuits are based on testing by the laboratory Valisure LLC - whose methods have been rejected by the FDA.
The litigation against GlaxoSmithKline and others began when Valisure created headlines in 2019 by claiming its testing showed Zantac and its generic equivalents contained ranitidine that changed to NDMA once ingested. Lawyers began spending on advertising for clients and cited the study in ensuing litigation, calling Valisure an "independent" lab.
Valisure had brought its findings in a citizen petition to the FDA, which ordered a short-lived recall. The FDA later said Valisure's methods were unreliable, saying the lab's "artificial stomach" was heated to 260 degrees and subjected to lethal levels of salt to create NDMA from Zantac.
Valisure detected no NDMA in the drug when testing it under normal human conditions. That didn't stop lawyers who, after a Florida ruling tossing their experts, moved on to courts in Delaware, California, Philadelphia and elsewhere.
Roberts has refused to step down from the cases, leading Keller Postman to file an appeal with the state Superior Court.
