Florida Woman Sues Novo Nordisk, Alleges Ozempic Caused Permanent Blindness Through Rare Eye Condition NAION- A New Filing in the Growing GLP-1 Vision Loss Litigation
On July 28, 2026, a Florida woman filed a product liability lawsuit complaint (pdf) against Novo Nordisk Inc. and Novo Nordisk A/S in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that her use of the blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic caused her to develop a rare and irreversible form of vision loss known as non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION. The case, Schollmeyer v. Novo Nordisk Inc. et al., Civil Action No. 2:26-cv-05273, is one of many complaints filed within In Re: Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists (GLP-1 RAs) Non-Arteritic Ischemic Optic Neuropathy Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3163, presided over by Judge Karen Spencer Marston.
The complaint frames Ozempic’s success story — one of the most heavily marketed and financially lucrative pharmaceutical launches in recent history — as the backdrop for what the plaintiff alleges is a corporate failure to warn patients and doctors about a serious, sight-threatening side effect that the manufacturer knew or should have known about for years. At the center of the filing is a single, deeply personal narrative: a woman who sought help managing her type 2 diabetes and instead, according to the complaint, lost her vision permanently and without warning.
Who Is the Plaintiff?
Plaintiff Caryn Schollmeyer is identified in the complaint as a 64-year-old resident of Hillsborough County, Florida. According to the filing, Schollmeyer consulted with her physician, Dr. Khalilah Knight, on or around September 18, 2019, to discuss treatment options for her type 2 diabetes. As a result of that consultation, Dr. Knight prescribed Ozempic that same day. Like millions of other patients across the country during that period, Schollmeyer began a once-weekly injectable regimen that had been marketed to both physicians and the public as safe, well-tolerated, and effective.
For roughly sixteen months, Schollmeyer continued taking the medication as directed, trusting the label, her physician’s guidance, and the broader medical consensus shaped in part by Novo Nordisk’s own representations about the drug’s safety profile. Nothing in the prescribing information, the complaint alleges, gave her or her physician any reason to watch for changes in her eyesight, to schedule a baseline eye exam, or to treat sudden visual symptoms as a potential medication-related emergency.
The Onset of Vision Loss
According to the complaint, everything changed on or around January 15, 2021. Schollmeyer began experiencing sudden vision loss — a symptom the complaint elsewhere describes as consistent with the hallmark presentation of NAION, in which patients typically notice blurred, clouded, or absent vision in one eye, often upon waking in the morning, with little or no warning and, in a meaningful share of cases, without any accompanying pain. The complaint does not portray this as a gradual decline that might have allowed for early intervention; rather, it is described as an abrupt, frightening event that upended Schollmeyer’s daily life essentially overnight.
Once the vision loss began, Schollmeyer discontinued Ozempic. But for NAION, discontinuing the triggering medication does not undo the damage that has already occurred. As the complaint explains in its background sections on the condition, NAION results from a transient interruption of blood flow to the optic nerve head, which triggers axonal swelling. That swelling, in turn, compresses the microcirculation around the optic nerve, worsening the ischemia in what the complaint describes as a self-reinforcing cycle of injury. By the time symptoms are noticed, the underlying neurological damage has typically already been done — there is no treatment that can reverse it, and no window of opportunity to intervene once the optic nerve tissue has been compromised. The complaint states plainly that Schollmeyer’s eyesight loss is permanent.
Understanding the Nature and Severity of NAION
To fully appreciate what the complaint alleges Schollmeyer has lost, it helps to understand what NAION actually does to a person’s vision and life, as described throughout the filing.
NAION is characterized in the complaint as a form of “eye stroke” — an ischemic event affecting the optic nerve rather than the brain, but with similarly permanent consequences for the tissue it damages. Because optic nerve fibers, once destroyed by ischemia, do not regenerate, there is currently no treatment that can restore vision once NAION has occurred. The complaint describes the condition as both irreversible and untreatable, a combination that leaves patients with essentially no recourse once the damage has occurred beyond adapting to a permanently altered visual field.
The complaint details several dimensions of how this injury manifests in daily life:
- Loss of central and peripheral clarity. Patients with NAION, the complaint explains, suffer from blurred or darkened vision that obstructs their field of view, along with loss of color perception and loss of contrast sensitivity. This is not simply a matter of needing stronger glasses; it is a fundamental degradation of the visual information the brain receives, affecting the ability to distinguish shapes, read text, judge distances, and process the visual world with the clarity a person previously took for granted.
- Risk to the unaffected eye. Perhaps one of the most unsettling aspects of a NAION diagnosis, as described in the complaint, is that the condition does not necessarily stop with one eye. The complaint cites data indicating that approximately 15% of patients who develop NAION in one eye go on to develop it in the other eye as well — meaning that for those living with the condition, the fear of total, bilateral blindness is not an abstract worry but a documented statistical possibility that persists for the rest of their lives. This risk is part of why the complaint argues so forcefully that physicians should have been warned to advise patients who develop NAION-consistent symptoms to immediately discontinue the medication — precisely what Schollmeyer’s own case reflects.
- Loss of independence. The complaint is direct about the practical toll that vision loss of this kind takes on a person’s autonomy. It states that many NAION patients cannot drive, or must accept significant driving restrictions; that many cannot read, or have substantial difficulty doing so; and that some are unable to continue working in their prior line of employment as a direct result of their diminished vision. For a 64-year-old woman, injuries of this kind do not simply represent an inconvenience — they can mean the loss of the ability to run errands independently, to continue in a career, to engage in hobbies that depend on clear vision, and to maintain the day-to-day rhythms of an independent adult life.
- Physical safety risks. The complaint also notes that being blind in one eye — and certainly in both eyes — creates elevated risk of falls, bumps, and other accidental injuries tied to impaired depth perception and reduced peripheral awareness. Simple tasks like navigating stairs, walking on uneven pavement, or moving through an unfamiliar space carry new physical risk for someone whose visual field has been permanently compromised.
Second most common cause of optic-nerve-related blindness. The complaint notes that after glaucoma, NAION is the second most common cause of blindness attributable to optic nerve damage — underscoring that this is not some obscure or theoretical condition, but a recognized and significant contributor to vision loss within the ophthalmological community, one that the complaint argues Novo Nordisk had every reason to be attentive to given the known presence of GLP-1 receptors in the human eye.
The Compounding Harms Alleged in the Complaint
Beyond describing the physical mechanics of the injury, the complaint lays out the broader constellation of harms that Schollmeyer alleges she has suffered and will continue to suffer as a result of her permanent vision loss.
The complaint alleges that Schollmeyer has endured, and continues to endure, severe physical and emotional injuries and what it describes as “radical changes” to her lifestyle stemming from her severe loss of sight. It alleges bodily injury and resulting pain and suffering; disability; mental anguish; loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life; the expense of medical and nursing care and treatment; loss of earnings; loss of the ability to earn money going forward; and other economic losses, including both past and future medical expenses. The complaint characterizes these losses as either permanent or continuing, meaning Schollmeyer is alleged to face their consequences not just now, but for the remainder of her life.
The emotional dimension of the injury receives particular emphasis. The complaint states that Schollmeyer’s life is “forever changed” as a result of her Ozempic use, and separately alleges that she “will never see clearly again” because of it. These are not abstract legal boilerplate phrases in the context of this case — they reflect the reality that a diagnosis of NAION, particularly one caused by a medication a patient took in good faith to manage a chronic but common condition like type 2 diabetes, represents a profound and permanent disruption to a person’s sense of self, independence, and future.
The complaint also emphasizes the element of betrayal at the heart of the case: Schollmeyer took Ozempic exactly as prescribed. The complaint affirmatively states that she did not misuse or alter the medication in any unforeseeable way, and that her use of the drug was, at all times, foreseeable to Novo Nordisk. In other words, this was not a case of misuse or an unusual, unpredictable reaction — according to the complaint, Schollmeyer did precisely what a patient is supposed to do, and precisely what her physician and the drug’s own labeling told her was safe.
A Diagnosis Delayed by a Lack of Warning
One of the more striking allegations in the complaint concerns not just the injury itself, but the process — or lack thereof — by which Schollmeyer and her physicians eventually connected her vision loss to Ozempic. The complaint alleges that Schollmeyer diligently investigated the potential cause of her injuries, but that the relationship between her vision loss and her Ozempic use was not discovered — and, through reasonable care and diligence, could not have been discovered — until a date within the applicable statute of limitations for filing her claims.
This allegation matters both practically and legally. Practically, it means that for some period of time, Schollmeyer may have lived with a life-altering injury without a clear explanation for why it had happened to her — without the medical community, her physicians, or she herself having the information needed to link her sudden blindness to the medication she had been taking. Legally, the complaint uses this delayed discovery, combined with allegations that Novo Nordisk actively concealed information about NAION risk rather than disclosing it, to argue that the statute of limitations should be equitably tolled — that is, that the clock on Schollmeyer’s right to sue should not be held to have started running until she could reasonably have discovered the connection between her injury and the drug.
The complaint alleges that Novo Nordisk had sole access to many of the material facts concerning Ozempic’s propensity to cause serious and dangerous side effects, and that Schollmeyer and her healthcare providers were, at the relevant time, unaware of the company’s alleged misrepresentations and omissions. Had the true risks been disclosed earlier — through the label, through physician communications, or through any of Novo Nordisk’s other channels — the complaint contends that Schollmeyer and her physicians would have been able to identify the cause of her symptoms far sooner, potentially allowing for a faster diagnosis, even though the underlying optic nerve damage itself would still have been irreversible.
Why Venue Lies in Philadelphia
Novo Nordisk is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Plainsboro, New Jersey, and its Danish parent company, Novo Nordisk A/S, is based in Bagsvaerd, Denmark. Neither entity is incorporated in Pennsylvania. To establish why the case belongs in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the complaint lays out an extensive list of Novo Nordisk’s contacts with the Philadelphia region.
Among the connections cited: the complaint alleges that Novo Nordisk retained PCI Pharma Services, a Philadelphia-headquartered contract manufacturer, to assemble and package Wegovy, including the self-injection pens central to the litigation. The filing also points to Novo Nordisk’s recruiting activity for diabetes-care roles in Philadelphia, a 2020 Philadelphia Department of Public Health report that reportedly ranked Ozempic as the eighth most-marketed drug in the city based on physician gift data from 2018 through early 2020, and the fact that Accenture Song — the marketing agency behind the Wegovy account — maintains four Pennsylvania offices, including one in Philadelphia.
The complaint further alleges that Novo Nordisk funds substantial diabetes and obesity research at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Medicine, and that some Penn faculty who received Novo Nordisk research funding also served on the company’s advisory boards for semaglutide studies. Community sponsorships are cited as well, including Novo Nordisk’s role as a local sponsor of a Philadelphia “Walk from Obesity” event, its designation of Philadelphia as the second city in its “Cities Changing Diabetes” initiative, and a co-branded health promotion sweepstakes with the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Backstory: How an Accidental Discovery Became a Blockbuster
A significant portion of the complaint is devoted to recounting the scientific and commercial history of Ozempic, semaglutide, and the broader GLP-1 agonist drug class — context the plaintiff’s attorneys use to argue that Novo Nordisk had decades of accumulated knowledge about how these drugs affect the body, knowledge Schollmeyer and her doctors did not share.
The complaint traces the story back to the early 1990s, when Novo Nordisk researchers reportedly observed that injecting rats with liraglutide, an earlier GLP-1 agonist, caused the animals to nearly stop eating. That discovery, the complaint recounts, eventually led to FDA approval of liraglutide as a diabetes treatment (Victoza) in 2010, and later as a weight-loss drug (Saxenda) in 2014 — though Saxenda’s effectiveness for weight loss was described as comparatively modest, producing average weight loss of about 5%.
Seeking a longer-acting alternative that wouldn’t require daily injections, Novo Nordisk developed semaglutide, branded as Ozempic. The company submitted its new drug application to the FDA in December 2016, and the drug received approval in December 2017 for treatment of type 2 diabetes. The complaint alleges that in its approval announcement, Novo Nordisk represented that Ozempic had a safe and well-tolerated profile in clinical trials and identified nausea as the most common adverse event — a characterization the complaint suggests significantly understated the drug’s true risk profile, including the ocular risks it now alleges caused Schollmeyer’s blindness.
From there, the complaint documents a steady expansion of Ozempic’s approved uses and dosing: a 2020 approval for reducing cardiovascular risk in diabetic patients with heart disease, and a 2022 approval for a higher 2 mg dose — the very dosage group, notably, in which the complaint alleges a participant in Novo Nordisk’s own SUSTAIN FORTE clinical trial developed optic ischemic neuropathy. The complaint also alleges that Novo Nordisk began referencing weight loss in Ozempic television commercials before the company had secured separate FDA approval specifically for weight-loss marketing, a claim tied to the drug’s first TV ad campaign launched in July 2018.
Allegations of a Massive, Aggressive Marketing Campaign
One of the more striking sections of the complaint focuses on the scale of Novo Nordisk’s advertising and promotional spending, which the complaint argues created the market conditions that put Ozempic into the hands of patients like Schollmeyer in the first place. The lawsuit alleges that the company spent $884 million on U.S. television advertising over five years to promote its semaglutide products (Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus), with the bulk of that spending directed at Ozempic.
The complaint also details the drug’s remarkable social media footprint, citing figures showing the #Ozempic hashtag on TikTok surpassing 1.2 billion views, alongside hundreds of millions of views on related hashtags like #ozempicjourney. It further alleges that Novo Nordisk partnered directly with Meta and Instagram on ad campaigns and that the company spent over $33 million in 2022 alone on traditional physician marketing and detailing, according to Open Payments data cited in the complaint.
The cultural impact of this marketing blitz is cited as further evidence of its effectiveness: the complaint notes that Ozempic was described by one media outlet as “2023’s buzziest drug,” was the subject of late-night television jokes, and became a fixture of popular conversation. The complaint frames this ubiquity as significant because, in the plaintiff’s view, the same marketing engine that made Ozempic a household name never adequately conveyed the drug’s more serious risks — including, centrally, the alleged risk of NAION that the complaint says ultimately cost Schollmeyer her sight.
According to the complaint, Novo Nordisk’s sales reportedly jumped 50% to more than $3.7 billion in just the first six months of 2023, with weekly U.S. prescriptions reaching the tens of thousands as early as 2021 — the same general period during which Schollmeyer herself was prescribed and using the drug.
The Scientific Evidence Cited in the Complaint
The complaint leans heavily on a body of published and pre-print research that has emerged in recent years examining a potential link between semaglutide and NAION — research the complaint argues confirms, in hindsight, the very injury Schollmeyer alleges she suffered.
The Hathaway study (JAMA Ophthalmology, July 2024): Perhaps the most prominently cited study, this retrospective matched cohort analysis out of Massachusetts Eye and Ear examined more than 17,000 patients seen in a neuro-ophthalmology clinic between December 2017 and November 2023. Among patients with type 2 diabetes, the complaint alleges the study found a 36-month cumulative NAION incidence of 8.9% in those prescribed semaglutide, compared to 1.8% in those on other medications — a hazard ratio of 4.28. Among overweight or obese patients prescribed semaglutide for weight loss, the disparity was even more pronounced: 6.7% cumulative incidence versus 0.8%, a hazard ratio of 7.64. The complaint notes the study’s authors hypothesized that GLP-1 receptor expression in the optic nerve, combined with GLP-1-induced changes in sympathetic nervous system activity, might affect blood flow to the optic nerve head and elevate NAION risk — a mechanism consistent with the pathophysiology the complaint attributes to Schollmeyer’s own injury.
The Danish-Norwegian cohort study (pre-print, December 2024): This registry-based study reportedly tracked over 424,000 Danish patients with type 2 diabetes between 2018 and 2023, finding that semaglutide exposure was associated with more than double the risk of NAION compared to non-exposed patients, even after adjusting for other factors. The complaint highlights the study’s observation that first-time NAION diagnoses reached an all-time high in Denmark in the years following semaglutide’s 2018 introduction there.
The Silverii meta-analysis: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials across the GLP-1 drug class — including Novo Nordisk’s own trials — reportedly found a higher, though not statistically significant, rate of optic ischemic neuropathy in the treatment group compared to placebo (5.6 versus 3.0 cases per 100,000 patient-years). The complaint notes the study authors cautioned that the rarity of the condition may have led to underreporting and an underestimated risk in clinical trials.
The Katz case series (JAMA Ophthalmology, January 2025): This case series examined nine patients on GLP-1 drugs who experienced ophthalmologic complications; seven developed NAION. The complaint highlights one case involving a patient with a documented positive challenge and rechallenge — meaning she developed vision loss in one eye after starting semaglutide, stopped the drug, then resumed it two months later and subsequently developed NAION-consistent vision loss in her other eye. The complaint appears to draw a direct parallel between this pattern and Schollmeyer’s own decision to discontinue Ozempic once her symptoms began, framing her prompt discontinuation as consistent with what the medical literature would suggest was the appropriate — if belated — response.
Novo Nordisk’s own SUSTAIN FORTE trial: The complaint cites a Novo Nordisk-sponsored clinical trial in which a participant in the 2.0 mg semaglutide dosage group developed optic ischemic neuropathy, characterized as a serious adverse event — evidence, the complaint argues, that the company’s own internal data reflected this risk well before Schollmeyer’s diagnosis.
The complaint also notes that in December 2024, Danish regulators — the Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee of the Danish Medicines Agency — required Novo Nordisk to submit data related to semaglutide and NAION, and that on June 6, 2025, the European Medicines Agency recommended that NAION be added as a side effect to the product information for semaglutide medicines, including Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus. Despite this, the complaint alleges, no U.S. Ozempic or Wegovy label has ever included a NAION warning, even after at least thirteen label revisions for Ozempic and nine for Wegovy.
The Regulatory Path Not Taken
A key legal theory running through the complaint is that Novo Nordisk had a readily available mechanism to update its labeling without waiting for FDA pre-approval — and that its failure to use that mechanism directly harmed patients like Schollmeyer. The complaint points to the FDA’s “Changes Being Effected” (CBE) regulation, codified at 21 C.F.R. § 314.70(c), which allows a drug manufacturer to make certain “moderate changes” — including adding or strengthening a warning based on newly acquired safety information — without prior FDA sign-off. The complaint alleges Novo Nordisk could have used this mechanism at any point after emerging data began to suggest a NAION signal, but chose not to, leaving patients like Schollmeyer to take the drug without any awareness of the risk to their vision.
The Nine Legal Claims
The complaint asserts nine separate causes of action against Novo Nordisk, each seeking to hold the company accountable, in a different legal posture, for the same core injury: Schollmeyer’s permanent vision loss.
- Strict Liability – Failure to Warn, alleging Ozempic and Wegovy were sold in a defective condition due to inadequate warnings about NAION risk.
- Strict Liability – Design Defect, arguing the drugs’ risk of vision loss outweighed their benefits and that safer alternative designs were feasible.
- Negligent Failure to Warn, alleging Novo Nordisk breached a duty of reasonable care by not disclosing known or knowable NAION risks, including the failure to advise a baseline eye exam and ongoing monitoring.
- Negligence, citing a broad list of alleged failures in testing, monitoring, and pharmacovigilance.
- Negligent Misrepresentation and Marketing, alleging Novo Nordisk made false or misleading statements about Ozempic’s safety that Schollmeyer and her physicians relied upon in choosing this drug over other treatment options.
- Breach of Express Warranty, based on alleged representations that Ozempic was safe and well-tolerated.
- Breach of Implied Warranty, alleging the drug was not fit for its ordinary intended purpose.
- Violation of the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, alleging deceptive marketing practices that induced Schollmeyer’s purchase and use of the drug.
- Punitive Damages, alleging Novo Nordisk’s conduct rose to the level of actual malice or reckless indifference to patient safety, warranting damages intended to punish and deter, not merely compensate.
The complaint also raises an equitable tolling argument, contending that Novo Nordisk’s alleged concealment of NAION risk information — which delayed Schollmeyer’s ability to discover the cause of her own injury — should prevent the company from asserting a statute-of-limitations defense.
Part of a Larger MDL
This case does not stand alone. It is filed as part of MDL No. 3163, a consolidated multidistrict litigation proceeding in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania that centralizes numerous individual lawsuits alleging GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs — a class that includes Ozempic, Wegovy, and competitor products — cause NAION. Consolidation into an MDL allows courts to coordinate pretrial proceedings, including shared discovery and expert testimony, across what is expected to be a substantial number of individual claims arising from similar allegations and similar injuries to the one Schollmeyer describes.
What Comes Next
As with any newly filed complaint, the allegations in Schollmeyer v. Novo Nordisk remain unproven claims that the company will have the opportunity to contest. Novo Nordisk has previously acknowledged, according to the complaint, that cases of NAION were identified during its clinical trials, but the company has not added a NAION warning to U.S. product labeling to date. How the MDL court weighs the growing body of epidemiological research against the scientific uncertainty acknowledged even by the studies’ own authors — particularly around the precise biological mechanism connecting semaglutide to optic nerve damage — is likely to be a central battleground as this litigation, and the broader MDL, moves forward.
For Schollmeyer herself, the outcome of the case will not restore her vision; even a favorable verdict cannot undo the optic nerve damage the complaint describes. What the litigation seeks instead is accountability and compensation for a permanent, life-altering injury that the complaint alleges never should have happened without warning — for the medical expenses she has incurred and will continue to incur, for the income and earning capacity she has lost, for the independence she has been forced to relinquish, and for the pain, suffering, and emotional toll of adjusting to life with permanently impaired vision.
For patients currently taking Ozempic, Wegovy, or other GLP-1 receptor agonists, this litigation underscores the importance of discussing any sudden vision changes with a physician immediately, seeking urgent ophthalmological evaluation if symptoms like sudden blurring, dimming, or loss of vision occur, and raising questions about eye health monitoring with a prescribing provider before starting or continuing treatment.
This article is based on allegations contained in a civil complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The claims described are allegations only and have not been proven in court. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice.