The latest trial over claims that the discontinued heartburn drug Zantac causes cancer ended in a tie Wednesday as jurors in Chicago could not agree on whether Boehringer Ingelheim must pay damages to an Illinois man who, according to the man’s attorney, developed prostate cancer as a result of taking the drug.
It was the second time (link) that the jury failed to reach a verdict during the ongoing wave of trials (link) surrounding the now discontinued drug.
“We appreciate the jury’s careful deliberation,” Eric Olson, an attorney for plaintiff Ronald Kimbrow, said in an email. “Boehringer Ingelheim has now twice failed to convince the jury that Zantac is safe.”
He said the case would go back to court.
“We are pleased that plaintiffs once again failed to convince the jury of the truth of their unsubstantiated claims about Zantac,” Boehringer Ingelheim said in a statement.
The privately owned German drugmaker was the only defendant in the trial in Cook County Circuit Court after plaintiff Ronald Kimbrow joined others, including GSK GSK, which originally developed the drug, and Pfizer 
PFE, had agreed.
Kimbrow, 73, said he took Zantac from 1995 to 2019.
Boehringer Ingelheim, GSK, Pfizer and Sanofi 
SAN have all sold the brand name Zantac at various times since its approval in 1983 and have been named in tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging a link to cancer.
The litigation began after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked manufacturers to remove the drug from the market in 2020 due to concerns that the active ingredient ranitidine could break down over time or when exposed to heat into NDMA, a carcinogen.
Three Zantac cases had previously been tried in court, all in Illinois, with two ending in verdicts (link) for the defense (link) and one ending in an invalid verdict (link).
Drugmakers won a significant victory in 2022 when a federal judge in Florida rejected plaintiffs’ expert witnesses (link) for about 50,000 cases centralized in her court on the grounds that they did not use reliable scientific methods. Without these witnesses, the cases could not proceed, although some plaintiffs have appealed.
The Delaware Supreme Court said last month that it would consider the drugmakers’ bid to keep similar expert testimony out of the courts of that state, where more than 70,000 lawsuits – the vast majority of the remaining litigation – have been filed. A lower court judge declined to exclude the experts, allowing the cases to proceed.
Sanofi has agreed to settle about 4,000 cases (link) against the company, while Pfizer has reportedly agreed to settle more than 10,000 (link).
