A Look Back At America’s First Zofran Lawsuit

ZofranLegal.com discusses how far the Zofran litigation has come since the first lawsuit was filed.

The first complaint was filed by a mother in Minnesota on February 12th, 2015 in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania under case number 2:15-cv-00709-PD. She filed on the behalf of her two daughters who were both born with congenital heart defects.

The plaintiff alleged that there was no family history of these defects and that the children developed these cardiac issues because they were exposed to Zofran while still in the womb. She further claimed that as a result, her children have been prevented from thriving both physically and developmentally. In court documents, she stated that if she had “known the truth about Zofran’s unreasonable risk of harm, long concealed by GSK, she would never have taken Zofran, and her children would never have been injured…”

Her complaint is now just one of more than 230 filed against Zofran’s manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline. So many lawsuits have been filed, each alleging that the drug caused a birth defect in an unborn child, that the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation decided to consolidate federally-filed complaints into MDL 2657. This moved the complaints to a U.S. District Court in Massachusetts where they will be overseen by the honorable Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV.

Recently, GSK attempted to have all of these lawsuits dismissed, stating that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would have rejected any attempted changes to the warning label on the drug, warnings which plaintiffs believe should have already existed. Judge Saylor denied this motion but has stated that the company may revisit it in the future.

The lawyers at Monheit Law are currently offering complimentary consultations to anyone who believes their child may have developed a birth defect after being exposed to the drug in-utero. Those who have questions can learn more by contacting Michael Monheit at 877-620-8411.