Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a sweeping lawsuit against Pfizer and its CEO, Albert Bourla, accusing them of deceiving the public about the safety and transmission-prevention capabilities of Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA injection.
The 49-page complaint was filed on October 1, 2026, in St. Lucie County, Florida, and targets Pfizer and Bourla personally under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The complaint opens with a striking line: “Those people are criminals.” That is how Bourla described people who publicly raised safety concerns about Pfizer’s COVID-19 injection.
At the center of the case is an explosive allegation: Pfizer publicly assured Americans that its COVID shot was safe while the company possessed internal and external safety information involving myocarditis, miscarriages, strokes, adverse events, and deaths.
158,893 adverse events in just 10 weeks
According to the complaint, Pfizer’s own adverse-event database contained 158,893 adverse events from 42,086 case reports by February 28, 2021—only about 10 weeks after the vaccine received emergency authorization.
Yet in January 2023, Bourla publicly stated that Pfizer had seen “not a single [safety] signal” despite billions of doses having been administered.
Florida argues that statement was fundamentally incompatible with information already known about myocarditis and pericarditis.
1,223 reported deaths
The complaint also states that Pfizer’s database contained 1,223 reported fatalities following vaccination as of February 28, 2021.
Florida argues that the existence of this volume of serious adverse-event information undermined Pfizer’s sweeping public safety messaging.
The volume of reports became so large, according to the filing, that Pfizer hired 600 additional full-time employees and expected to hire another 1,800 workers to process adverse-event reports.
Pregnancy and miscarriages
Another major section of the lawsuit concerns pregnancy.
The complaint states that by February 28, 2021, Pfizer had reports involving 458 pregnant women exposed to its COVID vaccine. Of those reports, 248 involved an adverse event and 52 involved miscarriage, according to the filing. Nearly all of the reported miscarriages occurred during the first trimester.
The lawsuit also points to Pfizer’s planned clinical trial involving pregnant women.
Pfizer initially sought approximately 4,000 participants, but the complaint states that only 348 mothers and 335 infants were ultimately enrolled and that the study was terminated early. The women vaccinated in that study were 24–34 weeks pregnant, meaning the trial did not directly provide first-trimester vaccination data.
The complaint further cites the Comirnaty package insert as stating that there are no available data on use before 24 weeks sufficient to inform risks for major birth defects and miscarriage.
Pfizer pushed transmission claims without testing transmission
The second enormous pillar of Florida’s case concerns transmission. Pfizer and Bourla repeatedly told the public that vaccination would protect other people.
In December 2021, for example, Pfizer said that getting as many people vaccinated and boosted as possible remained the best course of action to “prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
But according to the complaint, Pfizer’s pivotal clinical trial did not test whether vaccination prevented person-to-person transmission.
The FDA itself stated in December 2020 that there was no evidence at that time that the vaccine prevented SARS-CoV-2 transmission from one person to another, and transmission was not an objective of Pfizer’s trial protocol.
A Pfizer executive later publicly acknowledged that the vaccine had not been tested for stopping transmission before entering the market.
Florida alleges that Pfizer nevertheless used the idea of protecting loved ones as a powerful marketing tool to increase vaccine uptake.
More than $80 BILLION in COVID vaccine revenue
The financial stakes were enormous. The complaint states that Pfizer turned approximately $1.5 billion in research and development spending into more than $80 billion in COVID vaccine revenue.
Pfizer’s vaccine captured nearly 70% of the U.S. and European COVID vaccine markets, according to figures cited in the complaint.
Meanwhile, Bourla received approximately $101.8 million in compensation from Pfizer between 2020 and 2023.
Florida’s complaint goes beyond safety claims and accuses Pfizer of engaging in broader unfair business practices to dominate the COVID vaccine market.
Florida wants the money back
Florida is seeking far more than a symbolic judgment. The Attorney General is asking the court for civil penalties, a permanent injunction against deceptive or unfair representations concerning Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, attorneys’ fees and other relief.
Most significantly, Florida is also seeking disgorgement—legal language meaning Pfizer could be forced to hand back profits connected to conduct the court ultimately determines violated Florida law.
Finally, a government is attempting to hold Pfizer and Albert Bourla accountable by at least some degree for their gross deception.
For years, the company’s false safety and transmission claims helped drive mass vaccine uptake. Now those fraudulent claims are headed to court.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
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Great news. May this suit be successful. They are all criminals.
I hope this is the beginning of many !!