Delaware top court will hear drugmakers’ appeal to end Zantac lawsuits

(Adds further background in paragraphs 2-3, 5-6 and 10-11; GSK statement in paragraph 4)

By Brendan Pierson

Aug 27 (Reuters) - Delaware's highest court said on Tuesday it will hear an appeal by GSK and other drugmakers seeking to end more than 70,000 lawsuits claiming discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer.

GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi and Boehringer Ingelheim are asking the court to overturn an order by a lower court judge allowing plaintiffs in the lawsuits to offer expert testimony on the alleged cancer link, which the companies argue is not supported by sound scientific methods. Without that testimony, the lawsuits cannot go forward.

There has been no trial or final judgment in any of the Zantac lawsuits in Delaware. The state's top court hears appeals before final judgment only when it finds that there are exceptional circumstances.

GSK said in a statement that it was "pleased that the Supreme Court is of the view that such circumstances are present here."

Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, had urged the state Supreme Court to take the case, arguing that the lower court ruling would turn traditionally business-friendly Delaware into a "hotbed" of mass tort litigation if allowed to stand.

First approved by U.S. regulators in 1983, Zantac became the world's best-selling medicine in 1988 and one of the first to top $1 billion in annual sales. It was sold at different times by the four companies, all of which have faced thousands of lawsuits.

The litigation began after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2020 asked manufacturers to pull the drug off the market over concerns that ranitidine, the active ingredient in Zantac and generic versions of the drug, could degrade into NDMA, a carcinogen, over time or when exposed to heat.

Three Zantac cases so far have gone to trial, all in Illinois, with two ending in verdicts for the defense and one with a hung jury.

The drugmakers won a significant victory in 2022, when a federal judge in Florida rejected the plaintiffs' expert witnesses in about 50,000 cases on the grounds that they did not use reliable scientific methods. While the experts were different from those at issue in Delaware, the legal arguments made by both sides were similar.

Some of the Florida cases are being appealed, and the vast majority of the remaining cases are in Delaware.

Sanofi has agreed to settle about 4,000 cases against it, while Pfizer has reportedly agreed to settle more than 10,000. The companies have also settled some individual cases before trial. (Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Jonathan Oatis)