Philadelphia City Hall in Downtown Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA – A Philadelphia judge whom plaintiff lawyers don’t want making a key ruling in their shaky Zantac-causes-cancer lawsuits is standing tall against recusal efforts.
Judge Joshua Roberts has been targeted by the firm Keller Postman, one of the firms pushing the theory in 600 cases consolidated before Roberts, because of his wife’s employment history. The lawsuits are based on what other judges have found to be unacceptable science.
The suits claim ranitidine, the active ingredient in Zantac and other heartburn medications, morphs into cancer-causing NDMA in the human stomach. 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.
In Philadelphia, the issue with Roberts is that his wife Shannon McClure was hired as a partner by the firm Blank Rome in February 2025. The firm represents Apotex, which is a defendant in only one of the 599 cases, and Blank Rome lawyer Terry Henry has testified that McClure’s compensation does not have a direct relationship with fees or income made from Apotex.
“Any economic interest I would have via my role as Mass Tort team leader, through my wife's affiliation with Blank Rome, and Blank Rome's representation of Apotex in this one case within the Mass Tort is, at best, and based on the statement of Mr. Henry, exceptionally attenuated to the point of being nearly non-existent,” Roberts wrote Wednesday in urging the Superior Court to reject Keller Postman’s appeal.
Roberts, who also takes issue with how long it took Keller Postman to bring its recusal motion, wrote in a footnote that Keller Postman may be violating its duties to its clients with the “ongoing and seemingly never-ending campaign” calling for him to step down in contradiction to duties to expedite their cases.
He has been celebrated by the American Tort Reform Association for keeping other lawyers from presenting certain evidence in Philadelphia’s Roundup program. Those cases claim the weedkiller causes cancer and are based on a 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer study.
Roberts, as mass torts leader, oversees pretrial matters but will not preside over actual trials, should they occur.
“I have served in this role for nearly 3 years and issued dozens upon dozens of rulings across the various mass torts,” he wrote. “If I exhibited a pattern or practice favoring plaintiffs, Keller Postman surely would have broadcast that data loud clear as tangible evidence that I have been unable to remain fair and impartial.
“That has never happened. Instead, my goal is to move cases forward and provide parties with a fair and efficient forum to do that.”
What evidence he allows in the Zantac litigation will be key, as 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.
In Philadelphia, Keller Postman says it has noticed a whiff of a “personal displeasure” with calls for an evidentiary hearing on whether Roberts should recuse himself.
“By suggesting that an evidentiary hearing would be appropriate, you would be seeking to impugn my credibility to me, because I’m the one who’s deciding the motion,” Roberts said at a November status conference.
“There is no ability for a party to conduct an evidentiary hearing in support of a motion to recuse,” he added, plus, “The decision is mine. The decision is mine and only mine. There’s no other evidence. You can’t cross-examine me.”
