The first full week of November delivered the kind of news that changes intake scripts rather than headlines alone. The FDA ordered a class-wide vision-loss warning for GLP-1 drugs, the second Los Angeles social media addiction bellwether settled before a single opening statement, and the Supreme Court began disposing of pending Roundup petitions in light of its Durnell preemption ruling. Below is what moved, and what it means for plaintiff practices running pharmaceutical, product, and mass tort dockets.
FDA orders NAION warning across the GLP-1 class
On November 9, the FDA issued a drug safety communication requiring every GLP-1 receptor agonist to add information about non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, to the Warnings and Precautions section of its label. According to reporting in Pharmacy Times and Becker's Hospital Review, the requirement covers Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy, Eli Lilly's Mounjaro and Zepbound, and several older diabetes drugs in the class.
The agency's review drew on 126 clinical trials with more than 134,000 patients. It estimated roughly 6.4 NAION events per 100,000 patient-years among patients on GLP-1 drugs, compared with about 3.8 per 100,000 on placebo or older non-GLP-1 diabetes therapies. The FDA was explicit that a causal relationship has not been established, and both manufacturers dispute causation.
Why the label change matters for case-building
For plaintiff firms already screening vision-loss claims, the communication cuts in several directions at once.
- Notice and timing. A class-wide label change creates a clean before-and-after line. Claimants who began therapy and suffered NAION before the warning have the cleanest failure-to-warn theory. Post-warning claimants face a learned intermediary defense that now has a label to point to.
- Preemption. Manufacturers often argue that the FDA would have rejected a stronger warning. A label change the agency itself ordered undercuts that argument for the pre-warning period, because it shows the agency was receptive to exactly this information. Expect the defense to pivot to arguments about when the underlying safety signal became scientifically reliable.
- General causation. The FDA's disclaimer on causation will be quoted in every defense brief. Plaintiff experts will need epidemiology and mechanism evidence that goes beyond the trial-pooled incidence figures, which the agency itself framed as an association.
Reporting from Review of Optometry put the number of consolidated vision-loss claims at roughly 4,000 as of September. That figure will almost certainly rise. Firms advertising for these cases should tighten intake to capture ophthalmology records showing an NAION diagnosis rather than generic vision complaints, the drug and dose history, the start date relative to symptom onset, and comorbidities such as sleep apnea and diabetes that the defense will raise as alternative causes.
Snap settles the second Los Angeles social media bellwether
The coordinated social media addiction proceeding in Los Angeles Superior Court lost its second trial on November 2, when Snap settled with the bellwether plaintiffs two days before openings were scheduled. Jurist reported a confidential settlement with two teenage plaintiffs; The Daily Record noted that jury selection had begun the prior week and that this would have been Snap's first trial in the litigation. Meta had settled days earlier, and TikTok, YouTube, and Google had resolved their positions in the case before that, according to Top Class Actions.
The next bellwether trials are now set for March 2027, with more than 1,600 claims still pending in the coordinated proceeding. Tech Policy Press observed that the run of pre-trial settlements leaves the core liability theory, that platform design features themselves are defective, without a jury verdict to anchor valuation.
The valuation problem
For firms holding inventory in either the state coordination or the federal MDL, the practical consequence is that settlement values remain negotiated in the dark. Confidential bellwether settlements provide signal to leadership counsel but not to the broader plaintiff bar. Practitioners outside leadership should press for whatever information sharing their participation agreements allow, and should continue building individual case files on the assumption that a global framework, when it arrives, will reward documented treatment history, school and behavioral records, and clear platform-use timelines.
Roundup petitions cleared after Durnell
On November 2, the Supreme Court granted a Monsanto petition in a pending Roundup case, vacated the judgment below, and remanded for further consideration, stating that its decision in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell dispositively resolves the only issue on appeal in Monsanto's favor. That order is a signal that other Roundup verdicts resting solely on a state-law failure-to-warn theory are vulnerable on FIFRA preemption grounds.
Plaintiff counsel still holding Roundup claims should audit which theories remain. Design defect, manufacturing defect, and claims grounded in conduct beyond the label are the obvious candidates, though each will face its own preemption arguments. Our product liability coverage has tracked the preemption fight since Durnell came down, and the downstream effect on pesticide and agricultural-chemical claims beyond glyphosate deserves attention.
MDL docket notes
Hair relaxer
In the hair relaxer MDL pending in the Northern District of Illinois, summary judgment motions and non-general-causation Daubert motions are due November 16, according to case management tracking from Verus. The briefing will test specific causation for individual plaintiffs, including product identification and latency, and should be watched by any firm holding uterine and ovarian cancer claims in the docket.
Bard bellwether rulings
Mealey's reported on November 9 that a federal judge limited certain of Bard's defenses in a bellwether case while allowing the company to present alternative-cause evidence. The split ruling reflects a pattern visible across device MDLs: courts are trimming defenses that rest on regulatory compliance while leaving room for case-specific causation fights. For plaintiffs, the lesson is that a clean regulatory theory does not substitute for a well-built specific-causation record.
Acetaminophen
Kenvue asked the Second Circuit on November 5 to uphold sanctions entered in the acetaminophen autism and ADHD litigation, per Mealey's. The filing is a reminder that the litigation, revived earlier this fall on expert-admissibility grounds, still carries procedural risk for plaintiff counsel well beyond the merits.
Hawaii on toxic tort causation
The Hawaii Supreme Court addressed causation standards for mass toxic tort cases in late October, relying on comment g to Section 26 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts, according to Mealey's Toxic Torts. The comment addresses how factual causation is assessed where multiple sufficient causes contribute to harm. State supreme courts adopting a Restatement framework for multiple exposures can matter a great deal in cases where defendants argue that no single exposure was a but-for cause.
The docket by the numbers
Open Class Actions' October report, a third-party tracker whose figures can differ from official JPML statistics, counted 204,977 open mass tort lawsuits across 162 MDLs as of October 1. Talc in MDL 2738 remains the largest single docket at 69,340 cases. The concentration matters for resource planning: a handful of dockets hold most of the inventory, and settlement timing in any one of them moves cash flow across the plaintiff bar.
Context: the verdict and reform backdrop
All of this unfolds against a backdrop the defense bar and insurers keep emphasizing. Marathon Strategies' most recent annual report, covered by Risk and Insurance and Insurance Journal, counted record verdicts against corporate defendants in 2025 totaling $25.6 billion, with the number of $10 million-plus verdicts up sharply year over year. The same reporting counted eight states that enacted significant tort reform in 2025, including Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, and South Carolina, with measures covering litigation funding disclosure, damages, and fees.
Industry groups continue to point to third-party litigation funding as a driver, with estimates of the capital involved ranging from $10 billion to $13 billion depending on the source. Expect those figures to resurface in state legislative sessions opening in January. Firms that rely on funding for case costs, or whose clients carry pre-settlement advances, should plan for more disclosure fights in discovery and possibly new registration regimes.
What to watch next week
- Initial defense and plaintiff responses to the GLP-1 NAION label change, including any manufacturer statements on timing of implementation.
- Hair relaxer MDL motion filings due November 16.
- Further Supreme Court orders on pending Roundup petitions and any lower-court motions to vacate verdicts in light of Durnell.
- Scheduling orders in the Los Angeles social media proceeding ahead of the March 2027 bellwethers.
For weekly coverage of verdicts, rulings, and regulatory moves, follow our industry news section. Case-specific breakdowns of the rulings above appear in case law and settlements as opinions become available.
