Your commercial news round-up: Hurricane Milton, Wagatha Christie, Google, GSK

Reading time: four minutes

This week, the Law Society of England and Wales announced Richard Atkinson as its new president. Elsewhere, we take a look at the damage that’s been caused so far by Hurricane Milton in the US, provide an update on the Wagatha Christie case, outline the latest allegations against Google and how UK pharmaceutical company GSK is settling thousands of claims that its discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer.

• As Hurricane Milton tears through the US state of Florida, it’s been reported that more than three million homes and businesses are now without power and there’ve been a number of deaths on the Atlantic coast. In St. Petersburg, water supply has been cut after damage to the system, with officials expecting the shutdown to last “until the necessary repairs can be completed” when it’s safe. The Tampa Bay Times building has been damaged after a crane crashed into it while the roof of Major League Baseball team Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium, which was being used as a shelter for first responders, has been ripped off. The storm is reportedly moving away from Florida into the Atlantic Ocean, however hurricane-force winds and rain are forecast to continue.

You can follow live updates on the BBC.

• The famous Wagatha Christie case continued in the High Court this week in a dispute over costs. Rebekah Vardy has been ordered to pay Coleen Rooney £100,000 this month as part of the money she owes following the 2022 libel case. Vardy had previously been ordered to pay 90% of Rooney’s legal costs after losing the case, with the judge ruling that it was “substantially true” that Vardy had leaked Ronney’s private information to the press. A new case was launched by Vardy’s lawyers arguing that Rooney had no entitlement to £120,000 of the costs, while claiming that her lawyers had committed misconduct by understating her legal bill. On Tuesday senior costs judge Andrew Gordon-Saker ruled that Rooney’s legal team hadn’t committed any misconduct, explaining that while there’d been a “failure to be transparent”, it wasn’t “sufficiently unreasonable or improper” to amount to misconduct. On Wednesday, Gordon-Saker confirmed that the case would return to the court by next spring at the earliest.
   
• Moving onto big tech, the US government is looking into “structural remedies” to break up Google in an effort to challenge its monopoly in the internet search space. This follows a ruling that found that Google controls 90% of the global search market and had been illegally supressing competition in online search. As a result, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has filed court papers that state it’s looking into “remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features”. If the proposed remedies are accepted by the judge in the case, it would arguably represent the biggest regulatory intervention in the history of big tech, according to the BBC. Google’s Vice President Lee-Anne Mulholland has described the remedies as “radical” and “sweeping” and argued that they’ll “impact numerous industries and products, with significant unintended consequences for consumers, business and American competitiveness”. It’s expected that the DoJ will submit more detailed proposals by 20 November, while Google has until 20 December to submit its own remedies.
   
• Finally, UK pharmaceutical company GSK has agreed to pay up to $2.2 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits in the US over claims that its discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer. The settlements, which make up 93% of all cases, have been reached with 10 law firms that represent around 80,000 claimants. GSK also confirmed that it’s reached an agreement to pay $70 million to resolve a whistleblower complaint that argued that the company had concealed Zantac’s cancer risks. Having been approved for sale in the US in 1983, Zantac was pulled off the shelves in the US in 2020 over concerns that ranitidine – one of its key ingredients – could cause cancer when exposed to heat. In a statement to investors, the pharmaceutical giant said: “While the scientific consensus remains that there is no consistent or reliable evidence that ranitidine increases the risk of any cancer, GSK strongly believes that these settlements are in the best long-term interests of the company and its shareholders as they remove significant financial uncertainty, risk and distraction associated with protracted litigation.” The company hasn’t admitted any liability in the cases.

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