The California Supreme Court ruled on August 3 that Gilead Sciences owed no legal duty to patients to develop and commercialize a newer HIV medication faster than it did, ending years of litigation brought by roughly 24,000 people who took the company's older tenofovir-based drugs.
The decision in the consolidated Gilead Tenofovir Cases came down 6-1, in an opinion written by Justice Joshua Groban. It reverses a 2024 California Court of Appeal ruling that had allowed a novel negligence theory to proceed, one that would have extended a manufacturer's duty of reasonable care beyond the obligation not to sell a defective product.
