A federal judge has sent 79 claims in the Benicar MDL back to state court after finding his federal court has no jurisdiction.

U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey determined that federal court has no subject matter jurisdiction over the Benicar MDL claims of 35 plaintiffs.

These plaintiffs allege they suffered excessive gastrointestinal symptoms resulting from their use of the blood pressure drug Benicar.

The judge remanded 35 claims from plaintiffs who live in the same states where defendant Daiichi Sankyo is either incorporated or has its principal place of business.

Due to a lack of diversity between the parties, plaintiffs who live in Delaware, Missouri or New Jersey will have to pursue their claims in state court, the judge said.

Claimants in the other remanded cases will need to refile individually, in accordance with an earlier order that severed all multi-plaintiff complaints from the Benicar MDL.

Benicar, also known generically as olmesartan, is one of a class of eight different drugs called angiotensin II receptor blockers. It’s approved by the FDA to treat high blood pressure, either by itself or in combination with other antihypertensive agents.

Generally, the plaintiffs in the Benicar MDL claim that defendants Daiichi Sankyo and Forest Laboratories failed to warn patients or their doctors about the association between Benicar and an intestinal condition called sprue-like enteropathy.

Patients with this condition typically experience severe and chronic diarrhea with associated substantial weight loss.

Some plaintiffs claim they lost as much as 75 to 100 pounds because of Benicar-induced sprue-like enteropathy.

Others claim they were suffering 10 to 20 attacks of diarrhea per day. Still others have claimed even more complications like colitis, infections, and cataracts. Some cases allegedly ended in death.

The FDA’s Warning

The FDA addressed this problem with a July 2013 warning. The agency noted 23 serious cases of olmesartan-induced sprue-like enteropathy found in its adverse events reporting database.

All patients in these reports improved clinically after they stopped taking olmesartan, the agency said.

According to the FDA, Benicar is the only known drug with a known link to sprue-like enteropathy.

Benicar MDL Trials Scheduled for 2017

The Benicar MDL, or multidistrict litigation, was created in April 2015 when the federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred 15 Benicar lawsuits to Judge Kugler’s federal court in New Jersey. As of this past June, the number of cases had grown to over 1,300.

In a May 2016 case management order, Judge Kugler scheduled the first few trials to begin in 2017. Ten such cases were chosen out of an original pool of 30 possible “bellwether” cases.

In multidistrict litigations like the Benicar MDL, courts sometimes use bellwether trials to give the parties an idea of how their evidence and legal theories will play out in front of a jury. This gives the parties a better idea of how strong or weak their individual cases are, helping them to determine whether they may be better off settling their case without a trial.