Judge Robin Rosenberg of the US District Court ruled that the 2,500 cases brought by plaintiffs in federal court had a foundation of inaccurate research, and that the one valid study of the medicine conducted revealed an “unprovable risk of cancer”.

Pharmaceutical firms impacted by the lawsuits: GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Boehringer Ingelheim all hugely benefited from the decision. Analysts have predicted that the decision would significantly reduce the possible liability associated with the Zantac case.

“a judge ruled that the 2,500 cases had a foundation of inaccurate research, and that the one valid study of the medicine conducted revealed an “unprovable risk of cancer”“

At the start of August, the shares of dominant pharmaceutical businesses were reduced by almost £30 billion. Analysts at Morgan Stanley projected the eventual loss to total up to $45 billion.

According to SVB Securities specialist David Risinger, the decision seemed to be “a best-case scenario for the companies”.

The share prices of the firms have now bounced back to a similar level to where they were at the start of August.

In the last three and a half decades, major pharmaceutical firms have sold ranitidine under the trade name Zantac. Variations of the medication have also been offered by other minor businesses.

The four parties involved in the lawsuit strongly disagreed with the allegations that said consuming Zantac amplified the chance of developing cancer and seriously questioned the reliability of the tiny independent lab that initially expressed worries about the association between Zantac and cancer.

“The plaintiffs’ scientists within this litigation systemically utilised unreliable methodologies with a lack of documentation on how experiments were conducted, a lack of substantiation for analytical leaps, a lack of statistically significant data, and a lack of internally consistent, objective, science-based standards for the even-handed evaluation of data,” the judge wrote in the ruling, which ran to more than 300 pages.

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