GLP-1 Product Liability & Commercial Litigation: MDL-3094 Daubert Ruling Still Pending; Novo v. Lilly Ad Injunction Undecided
Status as of Oct. 5, 2026 — both legal overhangs are in post-hearing limbo.
MDL-3094 (GI injuries, E.D. Pa.): Judge Karen Marston's Rule 702 (Daubert) evidentiary hearing on general causation ran Sept. 14–18, 2026, covering Cross Cutting Issues 2 and 3. The hearing has ended with no ruling issued yet — the court's public orders page shows nothing, and docket watchers report: "The federal GLP-1 gastrointestinal injury docket finished its expert-evidence hearing in September 2026. The court's public orders page shows no ruling yet." Approximately 4,022 gastroparesis/ileus cases ride on whether plaintiffs' general-causation experts may testify at all: exclusion deflates the docket; admission sets up bellwethers and settlement scenarios for Novo and Lilly. (Standing context: Marston's Aug. 2025 order already required objective gastric-emptying testing for gastroparesis claims, and a separate NAION vision-loss MDL is building.)
Novo Nordisk v. Eli Lilly (D.N.J., Lanham Act false advertising): Novo's July 21, 2026 suit alleges Lilly's Zepbound/Mounjaro comparative ads — which pit Zepbound 10/15 mg against Wegovy 1.7/2.4 mg while omitting the 7.2 mg Wegovy dose FDA approved in March 2026 — mislead consumers under outdated comparisons. Novo's motion for a preliminary injunction was argued at an Aug. 27 hearing in Trenton (per Reuters); as of this cycle no ruling has been reported. The stakes are commercial, not just legal: Novo told the court the Zepbound campaign has generated ~700 million impressions since April, and Lilly spent $67.8M on linear TV ads for Zepbound in Q2 alone (iSpot, via Fierce Pharma). An injunction would force Lilly to rework its highest-spend DTC messaging mid-launch.
Investor takeaway: Neither overhang has a date certain. The Daubert opinion is the single biggest binary event for the litigation overhang (watched); the injunction ruling is a near-term sentiment catalyst for both stocks (watched). Meanwhile Lilly's separate patent suits against generic tirzepatide filers (30-month stay) and its six-federal-lawsuit campaign against the retatrutide black market continue in the background (watched).