In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss:
Zantac Lawsuit Update 2021
Hello. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld, and today I am joined by my colleague Marty Gould, and we are going to talk about the Zantac litigation. Marty, first off, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me on, Jon.
Marty, to begin with I want to talk about Zantac lawsuits in 2021. I'd like you to bring us up to date in terms of what the status of the Zantac litigation is. Lots of cases have been filed, lots of news headlines, but can you bring us up to date in terms of where the litigation stands as of today in 2021?
Sure. Thanks for having me on, Jon. In terms of where we're at with the Zantac cases, hundreds and hundreds of cases have been filed across the country, thousands of cases. They've been consolidated into a multi-district litigation in Florida, in the Southern District of Florida. This is done for efficiency purposes so that the discovery in the case can be performed at the same time and you don't have different rulings in hundreds of different courts. Each case is still an individual case because everybody's injuries and exposures are different, but this stage of the case is all being done at the same time. We can expect some of the first trials, what's called bellwether trials, to go at the end of 2022, that's that's the hope. And that will give us a good assessment of what's going to happen with this litigation.
So one of the things that is related to every single type of civil action is the statute of limitations, the time that you have to file a lawsuit. How does the statute of limitations come into play with respect to Zantac lawsuits? In other words, if someone's watching this and they think they may have a potential case, and they're asking you, how long do I have to file a case? How would you respond to that?
Well the first question I would ask is, in what State did you take Zantac? So one of the most important things is for a client, or potential client, to immediately call a lawyer and have them assess their case, because the statute of limitations that would apply would be the one, typically, where the exposure happened, so where the client was buying the Zantac, taking it. And that State's statute of limitations for personal injury cases, for product liability cases, would apply. So that's why it's very important for somebody who may have a case to immediately call a lawyer experienced in this type of case, and find out when your statute of limitations is.
In terms of civil cases, everything ultimately comes down to one thing, it's really about getting compensation, getting financial compensation for your particular injury, for your particular situation. In terms of the Zantac cases, a lot of times people are asking, is there a set payout for a Zantac lawsuit? What is the average settlement for a Zantac case? We know that these cases are still really much in their infancy as far as the litigation goes, but can you give us an idea as to the elements of damages in these cases, and how they may be valued?
So, like you mentioned, we're still in ?he earlier stages of the case, there's no cases that have settled yet. Every case is going to be different, the value of the case is going to be contingent on the individual diagnosis, the treatment, and the experience of that person. These are people who have cancer, many of them are undergoing chemotherapy, invasive surgeries. Some people have lost loved ones, these are catastrophic injuries. So in a personal injury case like this, you can pursue compensation for physical and emotional, pain and suffering, lost wages, lost earning capacity. If you lost a loved one, loss of society, loss of support, emotional distress. These are all things that you can legally seek compensation for, and everybody's case is going to be a little bit different based off their experiences, but these are very serious cases, and they're being treated as very serious cases.
So potentially, people could be looking at substantial damages just in terms of their past and future medical care alone, in some of these situations, correct?
Exactly. And you can get the past medical expenses, which can be significant in a cancer case, future medical care, monitoring of somebody's cancer in those cases where someone, hopefully, has survived and is in remission. And at the end of the day, we're alleging that lives were lost, families were ruined, these are very serious and catastrophic injuries, and that's the way these cases should be treated.
Now, one of the things that people also look at, and when I say people look at, a lot of times you can see what is trending on the internet, but one of things that comes up periodically is, has anyone won a Zantac lawsuit as of today, as of August 2021? I think you mentioned earlier that these cases are really early on in terms of their litigation, but if someone's looking and saying, hey, has anyone won a Zantac lawsuit, the short answer is, what?
The short answer, Jon, is no. Nobody has tried these cases yet. The discovery is still ongoing, there's a lot being done right now. The goal is to have trials go in 2022. The expectation is probably toward the end of the year, there's much that has to be done before that. And those will be the bellwether cases, those first cases going to trial, which will be critical and important in terms of assessing what's going to happen with this litigation.
In terms of who can file a Zantac lawsuit, who would qualify to file a lawsuit against the manufacturer of Zantac under the guidelines that we're using as of today? Is it the individual? Is it the family? Is it both? Can you give us an idea as to who may qualify to bring a case?
Sure. So in terms of who may bring the case, typically it would be the person who took the Zantac and has cancer. If it's a situation where, tragically, that person has already died, the family can bring the case on behalf of that loved one, so they would bring the case as the administrators of the estate of the family member who is now deceased. The criteria that we're looking at is, did the individual take Zantac on a daily or regular basis for at least six months, and after taking Zantac, were you diagnosed with any of the following cancers? And these are cancers that are most closely associated with links to NDMA and the gastrointestinal system which the drug was impacting. Those cancers are stomach and gastric cancer, intestinal cancer, bladder cancer, esophageal cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, and breast cancer. But every case is different, so that's why it's very important to speak to a lawyer who can tell you whether or not you meet that criteria.
If someone's watching this video and they're saying to themselves, "You know what? I may have one of those conditions. I did take Zantac for a long period of time, but I don't have that product with me anymore. I either stopped taking it, I threw out." How does someone prove that they took Zantac at some point in their lives?
Step one is we always ask the potential client, do you have the Zantac box at your house? If you do, you want to preserve it, that's something that we're going to want to hold on to. That aside, there's many different ways where we can prove that you took Zantac. If there's any receipts from purchases, from like a Walgreens or CVS or any other drug store, medical records, sometimes there's going to be references to the fact that you were taking Zantac, or you might've been prescribed Zantac from your doctor, and that certainly will be in the record. Local pharmacy records, oftentimes people had rewards programs, rewards cards, where their name and their entire history of the drugs that they purchased at the store are documented.
And even in cases where you don't have any of that, this is something that could have been purchased over the counter, the testimony of the witness or family members, that's also evidence. We get an affidavit from you, or if you take a deposition and you say that you are purchasing Zantac, that's evidence in the case, or if you have a family member who can attest to that.
So bottom line is, don't let the lack of immediate physical evidence dissuade you from bringing a potential case and filing a claim, correct?
Correct. So, in the Roundup cases, many people, they would sign off on affidavit attesting and the fact that they had purchased Roundup, or they were exposed to Roundup, in their backyard, gardening and what have you. So the testimony alone is also evidence in the case, in addition to everything else we talked about.
Marty, one of the, I guess, types of litigation that this falls under, that Zantac falls under, is this considered to be a mass tort? And the word mass tort seems to get thrown around a lot. Can you explain to us what a mass tort is, and what a class action is? Are they pretty much the same? Are they different? Give us a little bit of a breakdown of that, and how you would categorize the Zantac litigation.
So, we're taking these cases on as mass torts, and that's because we treat every client and every case as a separate case. Everybody had different exposures, different injuries resulting, and everybody's experiences are different. Some people tragically lost loved ones, some people beat the cancer. So these are all factors that are taken into a case, but in terms of how the case is managed, these are being managed as a multi-district litigation, where you have one judge who's presiding over essentially all the cases in the pre-trial stages. So you have rulings regarding discovery matters that are being handled in a consistent manner, and then cases are being tried on an individual basis, where the individual merits of each case is being tried. That's important too, because in some cases, people really did have catastrophic losses and that's important for the jury and the defendants to understand that.
In terms of a class action, it's similar in the respect that you have one court overseeing the discovery process, but you have a few plaintiffs that are filing a case representing the entire class. So each individual isn't necessarily having their case looked at, in an individual capacity. And in a class action case, generally, everybody gets the same amount of recovery. They have the same case, same amount of recovery, rather than having individual recoveries based off of individual experiences.
So in the case of Zantac, and Roundup, where there's what's called an MDL that you mentioned, the damages and the cases are evaluated on an individual basis, as opposed to a holistic base where the damages are looked at on a specific basis, case by case basis, correct?
Marty, this was great information. I appreciate your time and your expertise with these updates, and I look forward to talking with you again as these cases continue to churn through the litigation process. Thank you.
