GLP-1 Lawsuit Defendants Filed Motion To Dismiss Most Claims in Plaintiffs’ Master Complaint

Drug makers hope to defeat failure to warn charges during hearings over certain cross-cutting issues, later in the GLP-1 litigation.

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are asking a federal judge to dismiss almost all claims presented  in GLP-1 lawsuits over the side effects of Ozempic, Mounjaro and similar medications, except allegations regarding failure to warn about gastrointestinal problems, which they intend to deal with later in the litigation.

The two drug manufacturing companies face more than 1,300 Ozempic lawsuits, Wegovy lawsuits, Mounjaro lawsuits and other claims involving users of a new class of medications, known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, which are widely used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and for weight loss.

Each of the claims raise similar allegations that the drug makers knew or should have known that users may experience severe and potentially life-threatening gastrointestinal side effects, such as stomach paralysis, ileus and intestinal obstruction but placed a desire for profits before consumer safety.

Given common questions of fact and law raised in complaints brought 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.

In November 2024, Judge Marston approved the filing of a “Master Complaint,” which outlines all of the common allegations raised in the litigation. This has allowed individuals to bring their claims through short-form complaints, where they adopt certain allegations and claims relevant to their lawsuit.

This process was designed to simplify the process of submitting new GLP-1 lawsuits, and allow the court to address broad motions that may impact large numbers of claims, instead of addressing pretrial motions on each individual lawsuit.

On January 24, 2025, the drug makers filed a motion to dismiss (PDF) nearly all counts contained in the master complaint, arguing that plaintiffs have failed to present valid claims on almost everything except their Failure to Warn allegations.

The Court has already established a pretrial process directing the parties to focus early discovery and motions practice on resolving a number of “cross-cutting” issues in the Ozempic lawsuits, including whether claims are preempted by federal law, whether plaintiffs are required to present specific diagnostic testing evidence to substantiate their injuries, and whether there is sufficient general causation evidence linking Ozempic and the gastrointestinal injuries, which is expected to address whether the failure to warn claims survive.

In the current motion to dismiss, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are asking Judge Marston to dismiss the Master Complaint’s claims for breach of express warranty and implied warranty, fraudulent concealment, fraudulent misrepresentation, unfair trade practices, negligent misrepresentation, strict product liability misrepresentation, innocent misrepresentation, design defect, negligence, negligent undertaking and demands for medical monitoring.

February 2025 GLP-1 Lawsuit Status Update

If the lawsuits are cleared to move forward after the motion to dismiss and the “cross-cutting” issues, Judge Marston is expected to move forward with scheduling a series of early bellwether trials, which will test how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that may be repeated throughout thousands of individual claims.

Due to the time needed to resolve the “cross-cutting” 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 2027.

While the outcomes of these early test cases will not be binding on other claims, they will be closely watched and may help the parties negotiate GLP-1 settlements to resolve large numbers of lawsuits in the future.

Resolving the cross-cutting issues is likely to dominate GLP-1 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.