Fixodent Denture Cream Lawsuit Dismissed After Experts Excluded

The first Fixodent denture cream lawsuit scheduled to go to trial has been dismissed after the Judge presiding over pretrial proceedings in cases filed in federal courts throughout the United States excluded the plaintiff’s expert witness testimony. 

A lawsuit over zinc poisoning from denture cream filed by Marianne and Daniel Chapman was scheduled to be the first trial out of dozens of complaints filed against the makers of Fixodent and Super Poligrip by consumers who suffered severe nerve damage, myelopathy and other health problems after using denture adhesives with zinc.

All federal Fixodent lawsuits and Super Poligrip lawsuits are consolidated and centralized as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida before U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga.

The Chapman case was selected for an early trial in the MDL, serving as a bellwether case to help the parties gauge how the court and juries are likely to rule on issues that may appear throughout other lawsuits in the litigation.

In response to pretrial motions filed before Chapman Fixodent trial was scheduled to begin, Judge Altonaga granted defense attorneys’ requiest to bar testimony from Chapman’s expert witnesses. Judge Altonaga concluded that the three experts offered by the plaintiffs provided no reliable basis for the jury to conclude that Fixodent can cause myelopathy, rejecting claims that zinc contained in the denture cream created a copper deficiency in the body.

With no expert witnesses to support Chapman’s injury claims, the lawsuit was dismissed before trial was scheduled to begin on June 20.

In August 2010, GlaxoSmithKline reported that it has reached Super Poligrip settlement agreements in the vast majority of cases filed against them. However, Procter and Gamble has maintained that they intend to fight the cases filed over their Fixodent denture cream products.