Valsartan Bellwether Lawsuit Over Cancer Caused by Recalled Blood Pressure Drug Set for Trial September 8, 2025

Parties will meet with the MDL judge today, to discuss issues scheduling the remaining bellwether trials selected by the Court.

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all federal Valsartan lawsuits will meet with lawyers involved in the litigation today, as the court finalizes the pretrial schedule leading up to the first bellwether trial set to begin in September 2025, involving a claim brought by an Alabama man who developed liver cancer after using the recalled blood pressure drug.

There are currently more than 1,200 product liability lawsuits being pursued throughout the federal court system against manufacturers of generic valsartan pills, which were distributed with cancer-causing chemicals between 2015 and late 2018, following changes to the drug manufacturing process.

A lawsuit filed by Gaston Roberts, Jr. has been selected as the first in a series of Valsartan bellwether trials that will be held in the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL), which is intended to help the parties gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation.

In addition to liver cancer, the lawsuits allege that consuming high levels of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA) and other contaminants in the recalled pills resulted in colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, prostate cancer, bladder cancer, esophageal cancer and various other malignancies.

Since 2019, all Valsartan cancer lawsuits have been consolidated for discovery and pretrial proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, where they are currently being overseen by U.S. District Judge Renee M. Bumb.

In October 2024, the Court identified six Valsartan bellwether lawsuits that will go before juries first, including two stomach cancer lawsuits, two colorectal cancer lawsuits, one prostate cancer lawsuit and the liver cancer lawsuit filed by Gaston, which is scheduled to begin on September 8, 2025.

According to a court order (PDF) issued on November 27, the parties will complete expert discovery in the Gaston case by April 28, 2025, and submit a proposed pretrial order by August 11, 2025, before holding a final pretrial conference on August 28, 2025, about ten days before evidence will be presented in open court.

However, the parties have not been able to agree on the plans for getting the other five cases before a jury.

In advance of a case management conference scheduled with Judge Bumb today, the plaintiffs (PDF) and defendants (PDF) each submitted a letter on December 3, outlining their position on jurisdictional issues and waivers from certain drug makers that would be necessary to try each of the remaining cases before the MDL judge in the District of New Jersey.

If Judge Bumb is unable to resolve the issues with the parties, they have proposed replacing some of the remaining bellwether cases with other lawsuits that can be tried in the District of New Jersey after the Roberts case goes before a jury. As an alternative, Judge Bumb could also sit by designation in the court where any of the previously selected cases must be tried, or remand those cases back to the original jurisdiction for trial by another judge.

While the outcome of the Valsartan MDL bellwether trials will not have any binding impact on other remaining claims pending before Judge Bumb, they will be closely watched and are expected to influence eventual settlement negotiations to resolve large numbers of claims, without the need for hundreds of individual trials to be scheduled in coming years throughout the federal court system.