Ozempic NAION Lawsuit Count Hits 247: What the Vision-Loss MDL Means for Massachusetts Plaintiffs

The federal Ozempic NAION lawsuit docket reached 247 actions on the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation's report generated 1 October 2026, up from 216 one month earlier, and every one of those cases is still pending before Judge Karen Spencer Marston in Philadelphia. For Massachusetts and Boston-area claimants, the practical point is that an Ozempic NAION lawsuit is filed directly into MDL No. 3163 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, but the complaint names a home district, usually the District of Massachusetts, that governs where any trial eventually happens and which state's law is likely to apply.

That home-venue election is now visible in a public filing. Edward Gillen, a Dedham resident whose story Boston.com reported on 28 September 2026, alleges he lost vision in both eyes from non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy after using Ozempic in 2024 and 2025. His complaint, filed by Seeger Weiss LLP on 27 April 2026, designates the District of Massachusetts as his original venue. This article sets out the October numbers, the procedural posture, what Massachusetts law does to the standard pleading, and what the schedule means for claimants, defendants and funders.

Ozempic NAION lawsuit count: 247 cases on the October 1 JPML report

The JPML's monthly report is the most reliable public count of a federal MDL because it is drawn from the Panel's own CM/ECF data rather than law-firm estimates. The 1 October 2026 report lists MDL No. 3163, In re: Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists (GLP-1 RAs) Non-Arteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy Products Liability Litigation, with 247 actions now pending and 247 total historical actions. Identical figures mean no action has been dismissed, remanded or otherwise terminated since the Panel created the docket on 15 December 2025.

JPML report date	MDL 3163 (NAION) pending	MDL 3094 (gastrointestinal) pending
1 June 2026	110 (reported)	—
1 September 2026	216	about 4,022
1 October 2026	247	4,025 (4,139 historical)

The growth rate is slowing in percentage terms but not in absolute terms. Between June and September the docket roughly doubled; September to October added 31 actions, a 14% increase in one month. The gastrointestinal docket, by contrast, was essentially flat, adding three actions while it awaits Judge Marston's ruling on the general causation hearing held 10 to 18 September 2026.

Plaintiff-firm pages have circulated other numbers, including "more than 130" complaints cited in some September coverage. Those figures appear to reflect earlier snapshots. The 247 figure is the Panel's own count as of 1 October and is the number practitioners should use.

How many Ozempic lawsuits are in Massachusetts?

No public tally breaks MDL 3163 down by the plaintiff's designated home district, so there is no verified count of Massachusetts cases. What is verifiable is that Massachusetts plaintiffs are in the docket. Gillen's complaint designates the District of Massachusetts, and Parker Waichman LLP has announced a separate suit for a Massachusetts resident who alleges NAION and loss of vision in the left eye after using Wegovy.

The absence of a state-by-state breakdown matters less than it might seem. Until the cross-cutting rulings are made, every case moves on the same track in Philadelphia regardless of origin. The home district becomes important only at the remand stage, discussed below.

Can you file an Ozempic lawsuit in Boston?

A claimant can file a GLP-1 vision-loss case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston, but it would be tagged and transferred to Philadelphia under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 as a tag-along action. Most plaintiffs skip that step. Case Management Order No. 4, entered 29 January 2026, authorizes direct filing into the MDL. The Gillen complaint follows the template: it states that the plaintiff "designates the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts" as original venue, and checks boxes stating that he resides in Dedham and bought and used the drug there.

A Massachusetts state-court filing is a different route. Novo Nordisk Inc. is incorporated and headquartered outside Massachusetts and Eli Lilly is an Indiana company, so a suit against them alone in Suffolk Superior Court would generally be removable on diversity grounds and then transferred into the MDL. This explains why, unlike New Jersey, Massachusetts has no coordinated state-court GLP-1 docket. New Jersey's Supreme Court designated NAION claims as a separate multicounty litigation in Bergen County on 16 October 2025, largely because Novo Nordisk Inc.'s United States headquarters is in Plainsboro, New Jersey, which defeats removal for New Jersey filings against it.

What the "designated venue" in a direct-filed complaint actually does

Direct filing is a procedural convenience, and the designated venue is the mechanism that preserves the plaintiff's position as if the case had been filed at home. It has three consequences.

Remand for trial

Under Lexecon Inc. v. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, 523 U.S. 26 (1998), an MDL transferee court cannot try a transferred case without consent. Direct-filing orders typically provide that, at the end of pretrial proceedings, a case will be transferred to the designated district for trial. A Massachusetts designation therefore points to a jury drawn from the District of Massachusetts, not Philadelphia, unless the parties agree otherwise.

Choice of law

Federal courts sitting in diversity apply the choice-of-law rules of the state where the case would have been filed. Direct-filing orders usually adopt the designated venue for that purpose. For a Dedham plaintiff who bought and used the drug in Massachusetts, Massachusetts choice-of-law principles are likely to point to Massachusetts substantive law.

Bellwether pools

If Judge Marston later builds a bellwether program, designated venues will affect which cases are eligible and whether trials happen in Philadelphia by consent or on remand. CMO No. 12 does not set a bellwether schedule.

What the Gillen complaint alleges

The Gillen complaint is 112 pages and pleads twelve counts against Novo Nordisk Inc. and Novo Nordisk A/S: negligent failure to warn; strict liability failure to warn; breach of express warranty; breach of implied warranty; fraudulent concealment; fraudulent or intentional misrepresentation; negligent misrepresentation and marketing; strict product liability misrepresentation; negligent design; strict liability design defect; general negligence; and negligent undertaking.

The core theory is the one running through the docket. The complaint alleges that no version of the Ozempic label warned patients or doctors of a NAION risk, and that Gillen would not have taken the drug had he received an adequate warning. It also attacks direct-to-consumer and telehealth marketing, alleging the drugs were promoted through channels that let consumers obtain prescriptions with minimal physician involvement.

Novo Nordisk told Boston.com that it believes such personal injury suits are without merit, and pointed to a 2026 pooled analysis of semaglutide and liraglutide trials in the British Journal of Ophthalmology that found no increased NAION incidence against placebo.

How Massachusetts law changes an Ozempic NAION lawsuit

The master-style complaint is drafted to work in any state. Massachusetts law alters several counts.

No strict liability in tort. Massachusetts has not adopted strict products liability in tort. Its courts treat breach of the implied warranty of merchantability under G.L. c. 106, § 2-314 as the functional equivalent, and they read that warranty as congruent in nearly all respects with Restatement strict liability. For a Massachusetts plaintiff, the two strict liability counts are likely to be recast as, or merged into, the implied warranty count.

Learned intermediary doctrine, with a history. Massachusetts generally applies the learned intermediary rule to prescription drugs, so the warning is measured by what reached the prescriber. In MacDonald v. Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp., 394 Mass. 131 (1985), the Supreme Judicial Court carved out oral contraceptives and required a direct-to-patient warning. Plaintiffs may argue that heavily advertised, consumer-driven weight-loss prescribing resembles that setting. That extension has not been tested for GLP-1 drugs.

Chapter 93A. The Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act, G.L. c. 93A, allows multiple damages and attorney's fees for unfair or deceptive acts, and a breach of warranty can support a 93A claim. A consumer claim under § 9 requires a written demand letter at least 30 days before suit. The Gillen complaint as filed does not plead a separate 93A count; amended or later complaints could.

Limitations. Massachusetts allows three years for personal injury tort claims under G.L. c. 260, § 2A, subject to the discovery rule, and three years for warranty-based personal injury claims under G.L. c. 106, § 2-318. For vision loss that occurred in spring 2025, the clock is still running, but the discovery-rule question will vary by when each claimant connected the injury to the drug.

Why the US Ozempic label still does not mention NAION

Every Ozempic NAION lawsuit is built on a warning gap. No United States label for Ozempic, Wegovy or Rybelsus lists NAION as of October 2026, and no FDA safety communication on the subject has been verified. Outside the United States, regulators have acted. The European Medicines Agency's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee concluded on 6 June 2025 that NAION is a "very rare" side effect of semaglutide, affecting up to 1 in 10,000 patients. The UK's MHRA updated semaglutide product information on 5 February 2026.

The divergence cuts both ways. Plaintiffs cite foreign label changes as evidence that Novo Nordisk could and should have added a warning in the United States through the changes-being-effected process. Defendants are expected to argue preemption under Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555 (2009), and Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht, 587 U.S. 299 (2019), contending that the FDA, aware of the same data, did not require a warning. That issue is one of the two CMO No. 12 frontloads.

What happens next in MDL 3163?

Judge Marston's Case Management Order No. 12, signed 2 July 2026, granted the defendants' request to address two cross-cutting issues first: general causation (whether GLP-1 drugs can cause NAION) and preemption and warning adequacy. Expert and dispositive motions on those issues are not due until 2 July 2027. The court's order page lists no CMO dated after CMO No. 12 as of mid-October.

Date	Event
15 Dec 2025	JPML creates MDL 3163, assigns Judge Marston (E.D. Pa.)
29 Jan 2026	CMO No. 4 authorizes direct filing
27 Apr 2026	Gillen complaint filed, designating D. Mass.
2 Jul 2026	CMO No. 12 frontloads causation and preemption
1 Sep 2026	JPML report: 216 actions
28 Sep 2026	Boston.com reports Gillen case
1 Oct 2026	JPML report: 247 actions
2 Jul 2027	Rule 702 and summary judgment motions due on cross-cutting issues

The New Jersey multicounty litigation runs on its own calendar, with a master complaint reported due 28 October 2026. A Rule 702 ruling in the gastrointestinal MDL 3094 will not bind the NAION docket, but it will show how Judge Marston approaches GLP-1 causation experts.

What it means for Massachusetts claimants' counsel, defendants and funders

Claimants' counsel. The designated-venue box decides trial forum and likely governing law, so Massachusetts residents should be designated to the District of Massachusetts where facts support it. Counsel should expect strict liability counts to be challenged under Massachusetts law and plead the implied warranty theory with care. Medical records showing a neuro-ophthalmology diagnosis of NAION, ruling out arteritic causes, will matter at the plaintiff-fact-sheet stage.

Defense counsel. Under CMO No. 12, any win on general causation or preemption in July 2027 disposes of the docket before state-law differences matter. Massachusetts-specific issues such as the MacDonald exception and 93A exposure become relevant only if the cross-cutting motions fail.

Litigation funders and referral firms. At 247 cases, MDL 3163 is about 6% of the size of the gastrointestinal docket, and no case can reach trial before the 2027 rulings. Settlement value claims on intake pages are unsupported: there is no settlement, verdict or bellwether.

Frequently asked questions

How many Ozempic NAION lawsuits are pending?

The JPML's report generated 1 October 2026 lists 247 actions pending in MDL No. 3163, up from 216 on 1 September 2026.

Is there an Ozempic lawsuit in Boston or Massachusetts?

Yes. Dedham resident Edward Gillen's case, No. 2:26-cv-02762, is pending in the MDL in Philadelphia and designates the District of Massachusetts as his original venue for remand. No state-wide count of Massachusetts cases is published.

Who is the judge in the Ozempic NAION MDL?

U.S. District Judge Karen Spencer Marston of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, who also presides over the gastrointestinal MDL No. 3094.

Has there been an Ozempic NAION settlement?

No. As of October 2026 there is no settlement, verdict or bellwether trial date in MDL 3163, and Novo Nordisk says the claims lack merit.

Does the FDA warn about NAION on Ozempic?

No. The United States labels for Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus do not list NAION as of October 2026, while the EMA has called it a very rare side effect since June 2025.

When will the court decide whether Ozempic causes NAION?

Not before mid-2027. CMO No. 12 sets 2 July 2027 for Rule 702 and summary judgment motions on general causation and preemption, and a ruling would follow briefing and any hearing.