There is no certified class action for people injured by liraglutide, the drug sold as Saxenda and Victoza. Instead, thousands of individual personal injury suits against Novo Nordisk have been consolidated into a federal multidistrict litigation (MDL 3094) in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where they remain in pretrial proceedings with no settlements and no bellwether trial date set. A separate case does carry a class action label, but it is an antitrust suit brought by a drug distributor over an alleged pay-for-delay deal on generic Victoza, not a case patients join.1Wagstaff & Cartmell. GLP-1 Multidistrict Litigation MDL 3094: What Injured Patients Need to Know in 20262Bloomberg Tax. Novo Nordisk Accused of Pay-for-Delay Scheme Involving Victoza
The practical difference matters. In a class action, one lead plaintiff represents everyone and a single judgment or settlement covers the group. In an MDL, each person still has their own lawsuit; the cases are grouped only to handle discovery and pretrial rulings efficiently. Any resolution comes case by case, or through a global settlement framework that values individual claims separately.
The MDL Covering Saxenda and Victoza Injuries
In February 2024, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation created In re: Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists (GLP-1 RAs) Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3094, before Judge Karen S. Marston.3FindLaw. In Re: Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists Products Liability Litigation4U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. MDL 3094 It covers the two liraglutide drugs, Saxenda and Victoza, alongside semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy), tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound), and dulaglutide (Trulicity). More than 4,706 civil actions were pending in the MDL as of April 2026.1Wagstaff & Cartmell. GLP-1 Multidistrict Litigation MDL 3094: What Injured Patients Need to Know in 2026
The core claim is failure to warn. Plaintiffs allege Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly knew their drugs could cause severe gastrointestinal injuries but did not adequately disclose the risks. The Saxenda and Victoza complaints center on gastroparesis (stomach paralysis), ileus (intestinal paralysis), bowel obstruction, and severe nausea and vomiting requiring hospitalization. Because liraglutide works by slowing gastric emptying, plaintiffs argue the mechanism itself creates these complications, and that the label disclosed pancreatitis, hypoglycemia, and gallbladder risks while understating the GI risks.5Motley Rice. Saxenda Lawsuits
In August 2025, Judge Marston largely denied the defendants’ joint motion to dismiss, allowing the failure-to-warn and breach-of-warranty claims to move forward. She struck design defect claims on federal preemption grounds and dismissed medical monitoring requests along with what the court called vague misrepresentation claims.6Seeger Weiss. Ozempic GLP-1 Lawsuit7Miller & Zois. Ozempic Gallbladder Lawsuit
Case Management Order No. 30, entered in January 2026, set the schedule for expert disclosures and Daubert challenges.1Wagstaff & Cartmell. GLP-1 Multidistrict Litigation MDL 3094: What Injured Patients Need to Know in 2026 Parties involved have estimated first bellwether trials in late 2026 or early 2027, though no date has been formally set. No settlements have been reached.8Wisner Baum. Wegovy Lawsuit
Who Can File and What the Evidence Has to Show
There is no class to join. Each person files their own suit, and the case is then transferred into the MDL. To qualify, you must have taken a GLP-1 medication such as Saxenda or Victoza and suffered a qualifying injury — gastroparesis, ileus, bowel obstruction, or severe gastrointestinal complications requiring hospitalization.1Wagstaff & Cartmell. GLP-1 Multidistrict Litigation MDL 3094: What Injured Patients Need to Know in 2026
The gastroparesis claims come with a specific evidentiary requirement. In August 2025, Judge Marston excluded expert testimony that tried to diagnose drug-induced gastroparesis from symptoms alone. Any plaintiff alleging gastroparesis must now have undergone a gastric emptying study (GES) at the time of diagnosis to support the claim.9Dechert LLP. GLP-1 MDL Requires Objective Testing to Proceed Roughly 95% of MDL claims allege gastroparesis, so plaintiffs without GES documentation in their medical records face a significant hurdle.10Drug and Device Law Blog. Trimming Down the GLP-1 MDL The court relied on the Third Circuit’s 2024 decision in In re Zostavax, which affirmed the dismissal of more than 1,100 cases for failing a similar diagnostic threshold.
Supporting the plaintiffs’ theory of causation, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association analyzing health insurance claims from 16 million patients between 2006 and 2020 found GLP-1 users were 9.1 times more likely to develop pancreatitis, 4.2 times more likely to experience bowel obstruction, and 3.7 times more likely to develop gastroparesis than a control group taking bupropion-naltrexone for weight loss. Novo Nordisk has said gastrointestinal events are “well-known side effects” of the drug class.11Fierce Pharma. Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic, Wegovy Pose Added Risk of Stomach Disorders
Vision Loss Cases Are a Separate Track
If your injury is vision loss rather than a GI condition, the case is not in MDL 3094. On December 15, 2025, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation created MDL No. 3163 for claims that GLP-1 drugs caused non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), a rare form of vision loss. Judge Marston presides over this MDL as well.12U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. MDL 3163 Transfer Order13U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. MDL 3163 NAION Litigation It began with 21 consolidated actions and nine tag-along cases and is still in early stages.
New Jersey has a parallel state court track. On October 16, 2025, the New Jersey Supreme Court designated GLP-1 vision loss cases as a multicounty litigation before Judge Gregg A. Padovano in Bergen County, and all pending and future state NAION complaints are being transferred there.14New Jersey Courts. Notice to the Bar: GLP-1 NAION MCL Designation By late 2025, more than 40 NAION suits were pending in state courts and about 30 in federal court.15Levy Law. Ozempic, Wegovy, Saxenda and Victoza Vision Loss Lawsuits A NAION claim requires a documented medical diagnosis.16Drugwatch. Victoza Lawsuit
A July 2025 research letter in JAMA Ophthalmology reported a twofold NAION risk among liraglutide users without type 2 diabetes or obesity, and a 19% higher chance of NAION within the first year of use for any GLP-1 receptor agonist. The European Medicines Agency has called NAION a “very rare side effect” of semaglutide and ordered label updates; the FDA is still reviewing whether U.S. regulatory action is warranted.17Berger Montague. NAION
How Long You Have to File
Statutes of limitations vary by state, generally running one to six years. In most states the clock starts when the patient knew or should have known their injury was connected to the medication, not necessarily the date of the injury itself.1Wagstaff & Cartmell. GLP-1 Multidistrict Litigation MDL 3094: What Injured Patients Need to Know in 2026 Because the shorter deadlines are already near-expired for some early users, anyone considering a claim should confirm their state’s rule before doing anything else.
The Pay-for-Delay Class Action Is Not a Patient Case
The one liraglutide lawsuit that actually bears a class action designation is an antitrust case filed by a drug distributor, not a personal injury case brought by patients. In J.M. Smith Corporation v. Novo Nordisk Inc. et al., No. 1:26-cv-00420, filed in the Eastern District of New York, the plaintiff alleges that Novo Nordisk and Teva struck an illegal pay-for-delay deal when they settled patent litigation over Victoza in 2019.2Bloomberg Tax. Novo Nordisk Accused of Pay-for-Delay Scheme Involving Victoza
The complaint alleges the settlement transferred an estimated $903 million in value to Teva in exchange for Teva delaying its generic Victoza launch by 16 months, keeping prices artificially high.18Citeline Generics Bulletin. Teva and Novo Hit With US Victoza Pay-for-Delay Suit The 2019 settlement had licensed Teva to launch a generic version of Victoza as of December 22, 2023, with a possible earlier date no sooner than March 22, 2023.19GlobeNewsWire. Novo Nordisk Settles US Patent Litigation Case on Victoza With Teva In early 2026 the court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the monopolization claims. No ruling on class certification has been reported.20Concurrences. J M Smith v. Novo Nordisk
If class certification is granted, the class would consist of direct purchasers of Victoza (wholesalers and distributors that bought the drug from Novo Nordisk), not people who took it. Patients seeking compensation for injuries from Saxenda or Victoza belong in MDL 3094 or MDL 3163, filed as individual lawsuits.