Ozempic Death Lawsuit Raises New Safety Questions

Marsha Ettinghoff had been taking the medication for about six months when she developed severe gastrointestinal symptoms, according to the complaint. What began as nausea and vomiting escalated into what her family says was gastroparesis—stomach paralysis—before she aspirated vomit while being rushed to the hospital and died.

The lawsuit alleges the drugmaker failed to adequately warn patients and doctors about the risk of severe and potentially life-threatening gastrointestinal complications, asserting claims including failure to warn, negligence and wrongful death. Novo Nordisk has denied the allegations and says it will vigorously defend the case.

While thousands of GLP-1 lawsuits are already moving through federal court, most allege debilitating injuries—not death. (Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported two deaths and a suicide linked to semaglutide, and the UK’s The Sun in Nov. 2025 reported that drug watchdogs received 73 fatal reports since 2007.) Only a limited number of wrongful death claims have surfaced publicly, even as regulators review reports of deaths linked to the drugs—suggesting the full scope of fatal outcomes may not yet be reflected in the litigation.

FDA Scrutiny

Just as federal officials move to expand access and lower costs for blockbuster GLP-1 drugs, including Ozempic, this wrongful death case arrives amid intensifying scrutiny from regulators. A recent FDA warning letter found potential gaps in how Novo Nordisk reported serious adverse events, including life-threatening complications and deaths—failures that could delay the identification of emerging safety risks and the updating of drug warnings.

According to the FDA, some serious and unexpected adverse events were not reported within required timelines, while others were not reported at all or were categorized as “invalid.” Federal rules require drugmakers to report such events within 15 days so regulators can evaluate whether safety signals warrant changes to labeling or prescribing guidance. The agency did not conclude that Ozempic caused the reported events, but the warning raises broader questions about how quickly potential risks are identified and communicated to patients and physicians.

New GLP-1 Drug Research

The FDA’s findings come as new research reinforces concerns about the types of injuries at the center of the litigation. A large meta-analysis published in JAMA Network Open reviewed data from roughly three million patients and found the most consistent risks associated with GLP-1 drugs were gastrointestinal—particularly nausea, vomiting and delayed gastric emptying.

Researchers also identified signals linking the medications to more severe conditions, including gastroparesis and bowel obstruction, though evidence for other potential complications remained less certain. The findings underscore a growing scientific consensus that while the drugs offer significant metabolic benefits, their gastrointestinal effects may be more than temporary side effects for some patients.

That emerging evidence is central to the claims now moving through federal court. Plaintiffs argue that drugmakers failed to adequately warn that common symptoms like nausea and vomiting could escalate into serious—and in rare cases, life-threatening—conditions. In the Ettinghoff case, attorneys allege those risks were effectively minimized, leaving patients without a full understanding of the potential consequences.

Just as the federal government pushes to make weight-loss drugs more affordable and widely available, a surge of lawsuits, regulatory warnings and emerging research is exposing potential risks that critics say were minimized—or missed altogether.
Ozempic helped redefine weight-loss medicine. Now, in courtrooms across the country, it faces a different test: whether patients were told enough to make an informed choice—or whether the warnings came too late.