Evidentiary Hearing for “Cross Cutting” Ozempic Lawsuit Causation Issues Scheduled for May 2025

The extensive pretrial proceedings mean the first Ozempic bellwether trials are unlikely to begin until at least 2026 or 2027.

The U.S. District Judge presiding over the pretrial proceedings for all federal Ozempic lawsuits, Wegovy lawsuits, Mounjaro lawsuits, and other claims involving similar diabetes and weight loss drugs, has scheduled a hearing in May 2025 to review evidence linking the class of medications to incidents of gastroparesis, also referred to as stomach paralysis.

There are currently at least 1,331 individual product liability lawsuits filed against Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly throughout the federal court system, each involving similar allegations the drug makers placed a desire for profits before consumer safety by failing to warn users and the medical community about serious gastroparesis side effects, as well as other debilitating health risks linked to the medications.

Establishing that there is sufficient causation evidence that Ozempic (semaglutide), and other glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, can be scientifically shown to result in gastroparesis is a key issue in the litigation, which will impact hundreds of individual product liability lawsuits, and the Court has determined that this and other “cross cutting” issues will be addressed early in the pretrial proceedings.

Given common questions of fact and law raised in complaints filed throughout the federal court system, all GLP-1 lawsuits have been centralized as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where they are currently being overseen by U.S. District Judge Karen Marston.

Before scheduling a series of representative “bellwether” trials, which are typically selected early in MDL proceedings to help the parties gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated through the litigation, Judge Marston announced last year that she will focus the initial discovery and pretrial proceedings on resolving a number of “cross cutting” issues in the Ozempic lawsuits.

One of these issues is evaluating the general causation evidence linking the Ozempic and gastrointestinal injuries claimed in the lawsuits, including gastroparesis, small bowel obstruction, ileus and gallbladder injuries.

On December 20, Judge Marston issued a Court Order (PDF) scheduling an evidentiary hearing for May 14, 2025, to evaluate the general causation evidence in the litigation.

“Every expert whose opinions are the subject of a motion to exclude should be prepared to testify at the hearing on this date,” Judge Marston noted in the order.

The hearing is important because plaintiffs must show that they have experts who used sound science to determine their gastrointestinal injuries could be caused by GLP-1 drugs. Without such evidence the litigation would likely be dismissed.

However, that is only one of several such “cross-cutting” issues Judge Marston has identified, which also include determining whether plaintiffs will be required to provide specific gastroparesis diagnostic testing to establish that they have suffered that specific stomach injury, and whether the lawsuits are preempted by federal law.

2025 Ozempic Lawsuit Update

Due to the time needed to resolve these issues and then select and prepare a group of early cases for trial, the first GLP-1 lawsuits are unlikely to go before federal juries until at least late 2026 or early 2027. The outcomes of these early test cases may help the parties negotiate Ozempic settlements to resolve large numbers of claims in the future.

The litigation began about a year and a half ago, following a CNN report aired in June 2023, detailing several incidents of Ozempic gastroparesis. At the end of that same month, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) issued a warning about the Ozempic aspiration risks, encouraging doctors to have patients stop taking the drugs before any elective procedure.

Since then, the litigation has grown to include most drugs belonging to the GLP-1 class, including Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy, Trulicity, Zepbound and Victoza.

Given the widespread use of the drugs, which some estimates suggest have been prescribed to about 12% of the U.S. population in recent years, it is expected that the size and scope of the litigation will rapidly increase this throughout 2025, with tens of thousands of individuals likely to present claims after developing stomach paralysis, ileus, intestinal obstructions and other complications.

Resolving the cross-cutting issues is likely to dominate Ozempic litigation throughout 2025, with much of the schedule already laid out in an order issued by Judge Marston near the beginning of December. Fact discovery on general causation alone is not scheduled to be completed until July 2 of this year.

Judge Marston has scheduled a series of monthly Ozempic lawsuit status conferences throughout most of 2025, to keep the court and the parties updated on the progress of the litigation, for the following dates:

• January 14, 2025
• February 24, 2025
• March 18, 2025
• April 21, 2025
• May 19, 2025
• June 24, 2025
• July 29, 2025
• September 3, 2025