Lawsuit Indicates Mounjaro Caused Gastroparesis, Severe Metabolic Acidosis Injuries

Complaint comes as lawyers involved in hundreds of similar GLP-1 lawsuits are set to meet with the federal MDL judge for a status conference today.

An Ohio woman has filed a product liability lawsuit against the manufacturer of Mounjaro, alleging that less than a year of injections caused her to develop stomach paralysis and other serious injuries.

The complaint (PDF) was brought by Cynthia L. Pryor in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on July 11, naming the drug maker Eli Lilly as the only defendant. Pryor alleges Eli Lilly maker failed to adequately warn doctors and patients about the full scope of Mounjaro side effects, which have caused users to suffer devastating gastrointestinal complications.

Mounjaro (tirzepatide) was introduced in 2022 as part of a new generation of type 2 diabetes treatments known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, which also include Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound, the latter of which is a weight loss version of Mounjaro.

However, as the popularity of GLP-1 drugs has increased, so have reports of serious side effects, such as stomach paralysis, intestinal obstructions and vision loss. This has led to a growing number of Mounjaro lawsuits, Ozempic lawsuits and Wegovy lawsuits being filed by individuals nationwide over the past few years, each raising nearly identical allegations to those presented by Pryor.

In her Mounjaro lawsuit, Pryor indicates she was first prescribed the GLP-1 medication to help control her blood sugar in July 2023, and she continued to give herself the injections until May of 2024.

As a result of her Mounjaro use, Pryor alleges that she was left with gastroparesis, which involves severe stomach paralysis where food is unable to move through the digestive system.

Additional side effects of Mounjaro experienced by Pryor included persistent vomiting, constipation, bloating, hospitalization, as well as severe metabolic acidosis, which can cause organ failure and death. Pryor argues that these injuries could have been avoided if she or her doctors had been provided proper warnings about the risks associated with Mounjaro.

While the labels and medication guides carry warnings of some individual symptoms, like diarrhea, nausea and decreased appetite, Pryor joins a growing number of similar claims alleging that the company never warned of gastroparesis, and how severe Mounjaro side effects could become.

“Because the risk of gastroparesis is common to the entire class of drugs, any published literature regarding the association between gastroparesis and any GLP-1RA (such as tirzepatide, exenatide, liraglutide, albiglutide, dulaglutide, lixisenatide, and semaglutide) should have put Defendant on notice of the need to warn patients and prescribing physicians of the risk of gastroparesis associated with these drugs… Defendant knew or should have known of this risk of gastroparesis from the clinical trials, medical literature, and case reports.”

–Cynthia L. Pryor v. Eli Lilly and Company

Pryor presents claims of failure to warn, breach of warranty, fraudulent concealment, fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, and seeks both compensatory and punitive damage.

GLP-1 Gastroparesis Lawsuits

The complaint joins nearly 2,000 similar GLP-1 gastroparesis lawsuits currently being pursued throughout the United States federal court system. The claims have been centralized in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania as part of a multidistrict litigation under U.S. District Judge Karen Marston, who is presiding over coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

Today, Judge Marston is scheduled to meet with lawyers for the plaintiffs and defendants involved in the litigation in a status conference (PDF), which will give the parties the opportunity to update the court on where the litigation currently stands. The agenda calls for the parties to discuss the state of the MDL docket, the plaintiff discovery process, and efforts to coordinate with state courts, which have also received some GLP-1 lawsuits.

The conference is part of the pretrial proceedings and a process set in place by Judge Marston to prepare a small group of cases for early trial dates. These bellwether trials are designed to help test how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that would be central throughout thousands of individual claims.

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.

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