PHILADELPHIA - A Philadelphia judge with a reputation for keeping "junk science" out of his court is resisting calls from plaintiff lawyers with questionable evidence in Zantac cases to step down.
Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas judge Joshua Roberts was targeted because his wife worked at a law firm that represents GlaxoSmithKline in Zantac cases. Philadelphia's Zantac program houses around 450 cases alleging the heartburn medicine can morph into cancer-causing NDMA.
What evidence is allowed in will be key, as lawsuits are based on testing by the laboratory Valisure LLC. Its methods have been rejected by the FDA and a federal judge in Florida, but other state judges have allowed testimony based on it to be used by plaintiff lawyers.
The timeline appears to be this: All sides knew where Roberts' wife worked when he disclosed it in November 2023. In early 2024, he kept plaintiffs from introducing key evidence in another mass tort program, resulting in a defense verdict in March. In May, Zantac plaintiff lawyers asked him to step down before hearing oral arguments on defense objections, following an updated disclosure that his wife's firm represents GlaxoSmithKline in other jurisdictions.
"Plaintiffs' delay... must still be addressed," Roberts wrote in January. "A party must seek recusal at the earliest possible moment when the party knows or should know of the facts that form the basis for a motion to recuse."
Roberts became team leader of Philadelphia's Complex Litigation Center in November 2023. He disclosed his wife Shannon McClure worked at the firm Reed Smith and does not work on its representation of GSK.
The many defendants filed preliminary objections on global issues in the Zantac litigation in 2024, around the time his ruling in the Roundup case led to a win for Monsanto.
Roberts updated his information to note Reed Smith represents GSK in Zantac cases elsewhere on the eve of oral argument on the objections, which led plaintiff lawyers to ask for his recusal, citing a possible "unconscious bias."
Roberts had months earlier been celebrated by the American Tort Reform Association for keeping other lawyers from presenting certain evidence in the CLC's Roundup program. Those cases claim the weedkiller causes cancer and are based on a 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer study.
Chris Portier was the chairman of the IARC then, then he left to work as an expert for plaintiff lawyers. Roberts excluded the study.
Though Monsanto has won 15 of the last 22 Roundup trials, wins are blockbuster verdicts, and one in Philadelphia was worth more than $2 billion.
On Jan. 7, Roberts refused to step down from the Zantac cases. He said plaintiff lawyers were already on notice his wife worked for Reed Smith and waited too long to raise the issue.
Though plaintiff lawyers have appealed to the Superior Court, Roberts recently said the whole issue is moot. His wife left Reed Smith for a job at Blank Rome at the end of January.
"Plaintiffs will not suffer any of their claimed 'adverse' consequences as a result of my continued oversight of the Zantac mass tort program," Roberts wrote.
"My wife is no longer affiliated with Reed Smith, which was the (tenuous) basis upon which Plaintiffs' motion originally rested. My recusal at this point in the proceedings would not be related to any reason originally raised by Plaintiffs."
What the judge hearing pretrial matters (for now, Roberts), decides on evidence admissibility potentially dooms the Zantac cases.
Valisure LLC created headlines and tens of thousands of lawsuits in 2019 when it claimed its testing showed the heartburn medicine contained an ingredient that changed to a known carcinogen called NDMA. Lawyers cited its study in ensuing litigation, calling Valisure an "independent" lab.
A federal judge and the Food and Drug Administration eventually found fault with Valisure's testing, which included heating an artificial stomach to a level about 70 degrees lower than the average temperature of the planet Mercury and introducing a lethal amount of salt.
Valisure detected no NDMA in the drug when testing it under normal human conditions, and a Florida federal judge in 2022 dismissed about 50,000 lawsuits after finding Valisure's methods didn't fit expert witness standards.
Delaware and California federal judges reached the opposite conclusions and allowed lawsuits there to proceed.
Another study by Valisure turned into dozens of lawsuits alleging acne medication turned into benzene. Facing similar claims over dry shampoo, Unilever recently decided to settle.
Valisure founder David Light ran afoul of the law more than 15 years ago for possessing a cache of illegal weapons while he was still an undergraduate at Yale.
Valisure announced a cooperative research agreement with the Defense Department in 2023, accompanied by praise from U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro. The Pentagon has yet to provide Legal Newsline with any evidence such an agreement exists.
Valisure has settled its False Claims Act lawsuit against GSK that targets payments made by the government for Zantac, though the amount is not yet known.