Wegovy Lawsuit: Gastroparesis, Vision Loss, and MDL Rulings

The Wegovy lawsuit is a mass of individual product-liability claims accusing Novo Nordisk of failing to warn patients that its weight-loss injection can cause gastroparesis, sudden vision loss, and other serious injuries. More than 3,700 gastrointestinal cases are consolidated in a federal multidistrict litigation in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, a second MDL now handles vision-loss claims, and no settlements have been reached as of mid-2026. Bellwether trials are expected to begin in late 2026 or early 2027.

What Plaintiffs Are Claiming

The core allegation is that Novo Nordisk knew Wegovy carried serious risks beyond ordinary nausea and vomiting and did not communicate them clearly to patients or prescribing doctors. Complaints raise failure to warn, negligent misrepresentation, and design defect. Some also allege the company’s marketing downplayed risks while emphasizing benefits, and specifically targeted teenagers and minorities.¹

The injuries fall into three groups:

Gastrointestinal: gastroparesis (stomach paralysis), ileus, bowel obstructions, gallbladder disease requiring surgery, and pancreatitis. Roughly 75% of the federal cases allege gastroparesis.²
Vision loss: non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), a condition in which reduced blood flow to the optic nerve causes sudden, painless, and often permanent vision loss. More than 100 plaintiffs allege blindness or severe vision changes.³
Other: deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, kidney problems, and thyroid tumors.⁴

The first Wegovy-specific case was filed on September 19, 2023, by Kelly Miller in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. Miller, then 37, said she started Wegovy in January 2023 and was hospitalized with gastroparesis by July, and that her label did not disclose the condition.⁵

The Science the Cases Rely On

Wegovy’s active ingredient, semaglutide, mimics a hormone that slows the passage of food through the stomach. Plaintiffs argue that mechanism can push some patients into full gastroparesis.

A 2025 study in BMJ Open Gastroenterology analyzed more than 55,000 patients with obesity and reported gastroparesis at a rate of 6.5 per 1,000 person-years among semaglutide users, compared with 2.1 for bupropion-naltrexone and 1.1 for sleeve gastrectomy. After adjustment, semaglutide users were roughly three times more likely to develop the condition than the comparison-drug group.⁶ An analysis of the FDA’s FAERS database from 2007 through 2023 identified 3,966 gastrointestinal adverse-event reports for semaglutide, 8.2% of them involving delayed gastric emptying, the highest rate among GLP-1 drugs studied.⁷ A 2024 case report in Cureus described a patient who developed gastroparesis after four months on semaglutide and whose symptoms fully resolved one month after stopping the drug.⁸

On vision loss, a JAMA Ophthalmology study published July 3, 2024, by researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School analyzed more than 17,000 patients. Diabetic patients prescribed semaglutide were more than four times as likely to develop NAION as those on other diabetes drugs, and overweight or obese patients on semaglutide were more than seven times as likely.⁹ A larger 2025 JAMA Ophthalmology follow-up described “a modest increase” in NAION risk for semaglutide users with Type 2 diabetes.¹⁰ Researchers have noted NAION remains rare and that direct causation has not been definitively established.

How the Label Has Changed

When the first suits were filed in 2023, Wegovy’s label mentioned “delayed gastric emptying,” nausea, and vomiting, and acknowledged reports of ileus, but did not name gastroparesis as a risk.¹¹¹² The label also disclosed that in weight-reduction trials, 73% of adults on Wegovy reported gastrointestinal adverse reactions compared with 47% on placebo, and 4.1% experienced severe gastrointestinal events versus 0.9% on placebo.¹³

In October 2025, Novo Nordisk updated the prescribing information to add “Severe Gastrointestinal Adverse Reactions” as a warning and to state that Wegovy is “not recommended in patients with severe gastroparesis.”¹⁴¹ The company maintains that the label does not say Wegovy causes gastroparesis and draws a distinction between delayed gastric emptying and the clinical condition. The European Medicines Agency added a NAION warning to semaglutide labels in June 2025, but U.S. labels do not currently carry one.²

Where the Cases Are Being Heard

In February 2024, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated the growing docket into MDL 3094, In Re: Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists Products Liability Litigation, before Judge Karen S. Marston in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The MDL covers gastrointestinal claims against Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and other GLP-1 makers.¹⁵ In December 2025, a separate MDL, No. 3163, was created specifically for NAION vision-loss claims and assigned to the same judge, with a Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee appointed in February 2026.¹⁶

These are not class actions. No class has been certified. Each case remains an individual tort claim consolidated for pretrial purposes. As of June 2026, 3,763 cases were pending in the gastroparesis MDL, with more than 100 additional federal vision-loss suits, and more than 500 new federal cases were filed in the first months of 2026.³

A parallel state-court track is moving in New Jersey, where Novo Nordisk’s U.S. headquarters are located. In October 2025, the New Jersey Supreme Court designated GLP-1 cases as multicounty litigation and assigned them to Bergen County Superior Court under Judge Gregg A. Padovano, splitting the docket into one MCL for gastrointestinal injuries and another for NAION.¹⁷³

Key Rulings and What Comes Next

In August 2025, Judge Marston issued a 78-page ruling requiring every gastroparesis plaintiff to establish diagnosis through objective testing, such as a gastric emptying scintigraphy study. Claims based only on clinical symptoms will not survive.²¹⁸ The order is expected to narrow the pool of viable cases.

By spring 2026, the litigation had moved into expert challenges and summary judgment. Novo Nordisk filed Daubert motions to exclude all five of the plaintiffs’ causation experts, arguing they are unqualified and that their opinions linking GLP-1 drugs to gastroparesis, ileus, and gallbladder injuries should be barred. Those motions were fully briefed by late April 2026, with summary judgment briefing running through July 2026.¹⁸ How those rulings come out will largely determine whether the cases reach a jury.

For the vision-loss MDL, Judge Marston held a “Science Day” on June 2, 2026, giving each side 2.5 hours to present non-adversarial educational material on the medicine and pharmacology behind NAION. Materials from the session are not part of the official record and cannot be used as evidence.¹⁹

Bellwether trials, which are test cases used to gauge jury reactions and inform any settlement talks, are expected to begin in late 2026 or early 2027. The gastroparesis docket will go first, with vision-loss trials to follow.¹⁹

Novo Nordisk’s Defense

Novo Nordisk denies the central allegations. It acknowledges that Wegovy can cause delayed gastric emptying but denies that this equates to clinical gastroparesis, and it argues its FDA-approved labeling is adequate. The company has moved to dismiss the suits and has responded to the amended master complaint by asserting defenses to the failure-to-warn claims.⁴ In August 2024, the defense obtained an early ruling allowing preliminary motion practice on two issues it viewed as favorable: the reliability of gastroparesis diagnostic testing and the adequacy of its warnings.¹⁵

The company has made no settlement offers as of mid-2026. If bellwether verdicts favor plaintiffs, that posture could shift.¹⁹

Who Is Leading the Plaintiffs

The court appointed co-lead counsel for MDL 3094: Parvin K. Aminolroaya of Seeger Weiss, Paul Pennock of Morgan & Morgan, Jonathan Orent of Motley Rice, and Sarah Ruane of Wagstaff & Cartmell.²⁰ Motley Rice, which filed the first Wegovy-specific case, also has attorneys on the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee.²¹

1
Motley Rice. Wegovy Lawsuit
2
LlamaLab. GLP-1 Litigation Surge 2026
3
Drugwatch. Ozempic Lawsuit
4
Wisner Baum. Wegovy Lawsuit
5
Motley Rice. Kelly Miller v. Novo Nordisk, Complaint
6
BMJ Open Gastroenterology. Risk of Gastroparesis Among Individuals With Obesity Treated With Semaglutide
7
National Library of Medicine. Gastrointestinal Adverse Events Associated With GLP-1 Receptor Agonists
8
National Library of Medicine. Tendency of Semaglutide to Induce Gastroparesis: A Case Report
9
JAMA Network. Risk of Nonarteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy in Patients Prescribed Semaglutide
10
Drugwatch. Wegovy Lawsuit
11
Gastroenterology Advisor. What We Know About Semaglutide Adverse Events and Gastroparesis
12
CNN. FDA Ozempic Label
13
FDA. Wegovy Prescribing Information
14
FDA. Wegovy Prescribing Information
15
U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. MDL 3094 Transfer Order
16
Levin Law. Ozempic Lawsuit
17
New Jersey Courts. Notice to the Bar Regarding GLP-1 MCL Designations
18
MDL Update. MDL 3094 Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists
19
AboutLawsuits.com. Ozempic Vision Loss Presented During Science Day
20
Seeger Weiss. Parvin Aminolroaya Appointed Co-Lead Counsel in Ozempic Litigation
21
Motley Rice. Ozempic GLP-1 MDL Leadership Appointed