USA TODAY: ‘The worst public health crisis in decades’: First federal opioid trial slated to begin Monday 24 Apr 2020, 2:49 am

This article was originally published by USA TODAY.

The landmark opioid litigation pitting state and local governments against makers and distributors of the highly addictive painkillers is set to go to trial Monday after attempts at a settlement broke down last week.

An offer of $48 billion in cash, treatment drugs and services was rejected as lawyers for the 2,400 cities and counties involved clashed with states attorneys general over the distribution of the settlement.

“We’re disappointed that the cities and counties refused to go along with that deal,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said during a news conference in Cleveland after talks under the supervision of U.S. District Court Judge Dan Polster had ended Friday. “This would have helped the entire nation, not just a few counties, not just a few cities.”

Polster had encouraged a settlement, which would provide affected communities the funds to combat opioid addiction much sooner than the lengthy process of going through a trial and the likely appeals afterward.

Instead, the first federal trial related to an opioid crisis that has claimed an estimated 400,000 American lives over two decades is scheduled to begin with opening arguments Monday.

Asked for an update on negotiations, Paul Hanly, one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs, told USA TODAY via email on Sunday afternoon, “No change as of now.’’

Over the past four years, the economic cost of the opioid epidemic has cost the United States some $631 billion. And with more deaths possible, the costs could soar.

Cuyahoga and Summit counties in Ohio are suing drug manufacturer Teva Pharmaceuticals, four distributors and the drug store chain Walgreens claiming their practices contributed to the devastating opioid epidemic.

The trial has been considered a test case for similar lawsuits from governments across the country and possibly the linchpin for a settlement of the more than 2,300 suits filed against drug companies, including the likes of Johnson & Johnson – which already settled for $20.4 million with the two counties – and OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma.

Polster summoned the parties to his courtroom in a final attempt at reaching a deal that would expedite the disbursement of benefits, but the defendants balked at a demand for a larger payout distributed over a shorter time frame.

In addition, the state and local governments could not resolve their differences. Paul Farrell, a lead lawyer for the latter, told The Associated Press one major obstacle was the states’ insistence on being in charge of dividing the money.

“When the first day of trial starts Monday, we look forward to sharing the facts – and the facts will show that opioid makers and distributors conspired to create and benefit from the worst public health crisis in decades,” the lawyers for the local governments said.

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Herald-Dispatch: Commissioners approve scaling back opioid lawsuit, pushing it closer to trial 24 Apr 2020, 2:46 am

This article was originally published by Herald-Dispatch.

HUNTINGTON — Cabell County Commissioners on Thursday honored the request of a federal judge in Cleveland to scale back a $500 million lawsuit filed against several drug companies and pharmacies accused of fueling the opioid epidemic, a step that could bring the case closer to trial in West Virginia.

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster of Cleveland, Ohio, said in filings last month that he is ready to release Cabell and Huntington’s lawsuits filed against the distributors for trial, but wants the West Virginia governments to limit the type of defendants to only distributors and pharmacies.

He also requested attorneys limit the amount of defendants against whom they are serious about facing in the initial trial, and asked Cabell County and Huntington to limit the amount of claims made against those companies.

Polster is overseeing about 2,500 cases filed against manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers accused of breaching their duty to monitor, detect, investigate, refuse and report suspicious orders of prescription opiates coming into the states over the past several years — a duty the lawsuits claim companies have under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

During a Cabell County Commission meeting Thursday, commissioners voted to honor Polster’s requests, hoping to have the county’s case remanded for trial in West Virginia. Their votes followed an executive session held with attorneys representing the city and county in the lawsuit.

Huntington-based attorney Paul T. Farrell Jr. said having the case remanded to West Virginia is necessary as dozens of attorneys general from around the country are seeking to settle their cases. Farrell represents Cabell County, along with about 700 other counties and municipalities.

“The attorneys general from the across the country, except for our very own, want to settle the case and we want to get a trial before they do that,” Farrell said. “What we have done today is go ‘lean and mean’ so that we can approach the federal judge in Cleveland and remand the case back to West Virginia for trial, quickly.”

Commissioners agreed to ask the judge to sever and remand Cardinal Health, the McKesson Corporation and AmerisourceBergen, which would pave the way for a West Virginia district court trial against those companies. The commission asked to reserve all causes of actions and damages filed against the remaining companies and pharmacies in the suit.

They voted to allow attorneys to dismiss all claims against those three companies except a public nuisance complaint, which includes abatement, civil conspiracy and punitive damages.

In his filings, Polster said he would only send the case to West Virginia if the plaintiffs dismissed all claims except those claiming public nuisance, racketeering by pharmacies, civil conspiracy and punitive damages.

The four are the same claims that would have been tried with two Ohio counties this fall, if they had not reached a $260 million settlement with drug distributors and manufacturers just hours before trial was to begin last month.

Amy Quezon, of McHugh Fuller Law Group in Mississippi, said the public nuisance complaint is the county’s strongest case to make. Quezon is part of the legal team representing the city and county.

Commissioners also asked to waive all past and future economic losses of the county to pursue abatement of public nuisance. They agreed to release all necessary documents in the case and authorized Commissioner Kelli Sobonya and County Administrator Beth Thompson to testify and speak on the county’s behalf.

Quezon said if the case is remanded to West Virginia, any verdict or settlement would belong to Cabell County and Huntington and would not be shared with other plaintiffs seeking settlement.

Charleston attorney Rusty Webb represents Huntington in its lawsuit.

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ABC News: West Virginia plan: Companies pay $1.25B to end opioid suits 24 Apr 2020, 2:44 am

This article was originally published by ABC News.

Communities in West Virginia say they would end most of their lawsuits filed as a result of the opioid crisis if the companies that made, distributed and sold the drugs agree to a $1.25 billion settlement

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Communities in West Virginia say they would get $1.25 billion from the drug industry in a proposed settlement that would end most of the litigation stemming from the opioid crisis in the state.

The deal would be the first of its kind, even as drug makers, distribution companies and pharmacies are considering settling about 3,000 lawsuits nationwide over what many — including the families of those who died of opioid addiction — say was their role in fueling a crisis that has been linked to more than 430,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000.

Paul Farrell, a West Virginia-based lawyer who is one of the leaders in the lawsuits nationwide, said governments in his state have agreed to the deal that was hammered out by 250 lawyers in a Charleston office building last week.

Farrell said the companies would have to determine how much each would pay and officials in West Virginia still have to figure out how to divide the money among the state and local governments, hospitals and other entities. A panel of judges could be called in to settle the allocation formula if there are disagreements.

Lawyers’ fees would not come out of the $1.25 billion. Rather, they would be an additional amount set by the West Virginia Mass Litigation Panel, which is made up of state judges.

How to handle payments for lawyers has been a factor in a split among states over whether to enter a national settlement over opioids with three major distributors plus the drug makers Johnson & Johnson and Teva.

“I’ve solved the attorney fee problem by handing it over to the court,” Farrell said Monday. He would not comment on details of the talks surrounding the proposal.

Left out of the potential state deal would be state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s claims against drug makers. Morrisey would be able to continue those lawsuits or reach separate settlements — possibly as part of national deals.

The West Virginia plan also does not apply to two key drug makers, Purdue Pharma and Mallinckrodt. Both are attempting to settle opioid lawsuits they face through bankruptcy court.

Farrell said West Virginia was seeking its own deal partly because the state would be cut out of a piece of a national $18 billion settlement that’s under consideration with the three dominant distribution companies, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson.

The state has already settled lawsuits with those companies over the past three years for a total of $63 million. West Virginia also settled with a group of smaller wholesalers in 2016 for $11 million.

The West Virginia plan would be the first statewide opioid settlement with companies from all parts of the drug industry. West Virginia has the country’s highest fatal opioid overdose rate.

A spokesman for McKesson issued a statement saying the company is still working toward a global settlement “that would serve as the best path forward by providing billions of dollars in near-term funding, as well as vast amounts of free medication to aid in treatment and provide relief to the communities that need it now, including West Virginia.”

Officials in Ohio have been working on a plan for how to divide money among government entities if they reach a settlement, either as part of a national effort or separately.

The timeline for accepting the West Virginia plan should become clearer this week. Farrell said the companies would have until the start of a federal trial expected in coming months over claims from the city of Huntington and Cabell County against the major distributors. A judge is expected to set a date for it during a hearing Thursday.

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Bloomberg: One Man’s $50 Billion Vendetta Against Opioids 24 Apr 2020, 2:44 am

From America’s overdose capital, lawyer Paul Farrell is rallying communities to sue.

This article was originally published by Bloomberg.

The place might sound familiar, even if you’ve never been there: the Appalachian foothills, down by the Ohio River, where the sirens scream addiction and death.

Twenty-six overdoses in one afternoon. The highest death rate in the state. One in 10 babies born dependent. Huntington, West Virginia, is the capital of America’s opioid epidemic.

Paul Farrell knows all about it. He grew up here, went off to college, and returned home. He watched the calamity unfold. First it was prescription pills like OxyContin. Then it was heroin, $20 a hit.

Now, Farrell is looking to set things right. He’s the engine behind one of the most daunting legal endeavors in modern U.S. history: more than 800 lawsuits brought by cities and counties against central figures in the opioid tragedy—the makers of prescription painkillers and the companies that distribute them.

For now, he’s working out of a carpeted, windowless office barely big enough for his desk, some chairs and a pair of folding tables in an old bank building downtown. The lock on the building’s shared bathroom doesn’t work.

But if Farrell succeeds in making the industry pay for the epidemic’s toll, he stands to become wildly rich: By one estimate, the recovery in the opioid cases—which could be years away—could exceed $50 billion. Twenty-five percent of his clients’ portion would go directly to his firm and the firms he is working alongside.

With so much money at stake, it might be easy to view Farrell as one of the greatest ambulance-chasers of all time. He makes no apologies.

“We eat what we kill,” Farrell, 46, says. “Sometimes it’s a feast. Sometimes it’s a famine.”

On the opioid cases, he says: “I’m stalking. I’m stalking the herd.”

More famous lawyers are hunting, too—Mike Moore, for one. As the attorney general of Mississippi, Moore helped negotiate the largest corporate legal settlement in U.S. history: a $246 billion deal with the tobacco industry in 1998. Lately, Moore has been going after the drug industry over opioids, crisscrossing the U.S. to recruit people to his cause. Hundreds of cases have been consolidated before a federal judge in Ohio for what’s called multidistrict litigation.

But Farrell is spearheading the legal fight for many communities, notably in the Ohio River Valley, where tired coal and steel towns have come to symbolize the crisis. His five-lawyer firm and legal consortium represents more than half of the suing communities.

His legal theory begins with West Virginia Code Section 7-1-3KK. The public nuisance law was written to address relatively workaday issues such as landfills and environmental waste. Farrell is basically arguing that drug makers and wholesalers created an epic public nuisance that is costing governments many millions to clean up.

Suits have been filed against Purdue Pharma LP, Johnson & Johnson, Endo International Plc, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and drug distributors. The companies recognize there’s an opioid crisis but say they’re not responsible, adding that litigation is the wrong way to address the issue. After all, they didn’t write the prescriptions, and they say they complied with all federal regulations.

On this brisk spring morning in April, Farrell leafs through half a dozen maps in his office. The images trace the legal contours of his stake in a geography of despair: hundreds of hard-hit communities, places like Logan County, West Virginia, and its 6.9 percent unemployment rate. Each 8-by-11-inch map is color-coded—red, green, blue, yellow—to show which local law firm Farrell is working with in that particular area.

“If you drop a nuclear bomb right there—boom!—this is the fallout,” Farrell says, jabbing his finger at the Ohio River Valley, the 203,000-square-mile stretch where states battle the nation’s highest overdose rates. In 2015, 22,000 Americans died from prescription-painkiller overdoses.

Farrell, an intense and blunt speaker, seems to have been made for his mission. At Huntington East High School, he served as student body president and captained the soccer team before enrolling in the ROTC at University of Notre Dame. Farrell has maintained the trademark aggressiveness of any field general. A military history buff, he even once named researchers working with him Team Sun Tzu.

“If he decides he’s onto something,” says Atlanta mass tort lawyer Henry Garrard, “he’s like a little bulldog that sinks his teeth in until he brings it down.” Says Mississippi lawyer Michael Fuller: “It’s like playing chess with someone who knows all the moves of the game before you even get started.”

Farrell’s mother was a trailblazer in hospice, known as end-of-life-care, which Farrell says taught him a sense of compassion. After graduating from West Virginia College of Law, he followed his father and two uncles into the family law firm. He decided it wasn’t for him and left to become a plaintiff’s lawyer. “I was writing very large checks to dumbass lawyers, and I thought to myself, ‘I’d like to be one of those dumbasses that gets one of these checks,’” Farrell said.

His father, now a Circuit Court judge here, is blunt about his son’s lawyering.

“I told him when he left our law firm, ‘You don’t have to be an a–hole to be a plaintiffs’ lawyer, but he kind of ignores that at times,” Paul Farrell Sr. says.

But the elder Farrell adds that this is what it takes to be a mass torts attorney. “They’re aggressive, they’re smart and—most of all—they’re prepared,” he says.

For all his successes here—Farrell has won multimillion-dollar cases as a medical malpractice lawyer and became president of the state trial lawyers’ association before he was 40—his roots seem to have placed a chip on his shoulder. He gets worked up if he thinks the establishment is trying to play him. In the 2016 presidential election, he ran as a protest candidate against Hillary Clinton. He outpolled her in nearby Mingo County.

“People have been underestimating me for a very long time,” Farrell says. “I’m accustomed to being stereotyped as the Appalachia, redneck hillbilly.”

Yet what hurts most is how drugs have devastated his hometown. “I have people my age that I know that are addicted to opioids,” says Farrell, who is married with three kids. “I know people that have children in their early 20s that they have lost.”

Farrell is one of three lead attorneys in the litigation, along with Joe Rice and Paul Hanly, veterans of the Big Tobacco pact whose experience together includes some 40 multidistrict litigations. This is Farrell’s second, yet he’s fit in naturally.

“He’s a gladiator,” Hanly says. “He feels he’s on a mission to correct some wrongs that have adversely affected his state worse than any other state in the nation.”

Opioids swallowed Huntington for years before Farrell waded in. He sued the distributors on behalf of several counties in January 2017 after West Virginia’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, reached settlements totaling $36 million with Cardinal Health Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Corp. The settlements came too quickly and were too small, Farrell says.

“It pissed me off that we got handled like that,” he says.

Morrisey, a former lawyer and lobbyist for the pharmaceuticals industry, is now running for U.S. Senate as a Republican; his wife, Denise, lobbied for Cardinal for 17 years and represents drug companies.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Anthony Martin says Morrissey’s private sector work didn’t include opioid matters and asserts that the office is aggressive in holding the industry accountable.

“Monday morning quarterbacks don’t usually understand the matters they criticize,” he says. The settlement received wide support, and “its success spurred the filing of approximately 1,000 other lawsuits.”

Morissey’s wife declined to comment.

What makes this wave of opioids litigation different from the tobacco saga is that scores of cities and counties—communities on the front lines of this crisis—are taking matters into their own hands, rather than relying on states to fight for them.

Mostly, municipalities want the influx of prescription opiates to be contained and for the drug industry to be held accountable.

“I don’t expect a dime, but I’d like to see someone’s hide on the fence for allowing this to happen,” says Bob Pasley, a county commissioner in Wayne County, West Virginia, which hired Farrell.

Farrell began at home, in Cabell County, and fanned out. He met with local governments and their lawyers, tapping his legal network, and soon captured most of the Midwest. His coalition includes four national law firms and scores of local ones stretching from North Carolina to California.

Much of the legal drama will unfold in Cleveland, in room 18B of the Carl B. Stokes United States Court House on West Superior Avenue. During a February hearing there before Judge Dan Polster, Farrell listened as a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lawyer argued against releasing federal data on where distributors shipped painkillers. The companies themselves have said that revealing such details could harm their businesses. The DEA lawyer added that disclosure could jeopardize investigations and help criminals.

Farrell had printed copies of distributors’ websites and showed that anyone with an Internet connection could find their facilities. He told the judge that addresses were included in job applications and mentioned in press releases. “He completely did his homework,” says Russell Budd, a prominent Texas lawyer working with Farrell’s. “He knew they were going to make that argument.”

A DEA spokeswoman says the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation. Polster has since ordered the DEA to give the plaintiffs detailed prescription sales data from 2006 to 2014 .

Conventional wisdom holds that the consolidated litigation will be settled, though perhaps not until after the first federal trial, a so-called test case set for March 2019. Farrell says the litigation should be settled only if doing so would bring an end to the opioid epidemic—a high bar that would seem almost impossible to clear.

Farrell also doesn’t care if some of the companies in his sights are driven to bankruptcy. Out of fear of wider economic damage, the federal government has sought to avoid driving companies into insolvency since the collapse of Arthur Andersen following the accounting firm’s conviction on obstruction-of-justice charges in the Enron scandal almost two decades ago.

Some of these companies have already been hammered in the stock market. Endo, for instance, has watched its market value plummet by 90 percent in the past three years. Teva, the world’s largest generics manufacturer, is highly leveraged and restructuring. (Farrell’s uncle, Michael, represents a subsidiary of Endo; a May hearing served as a courtroom family reunion. Michael didn’t respond to requests for comment).

Farrell is pushing to lay blame at companies’ feet. That may be why he’s eying McKesson Corp., AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal, distributors of 94 percent of prescriptions drugs in the country, according to Drug Channels Institute. The companies have vigorously denied the claims. They say they are working within a regulated system and have met their obligations.

“There’s nobody in the litigation who knows the distributor case as well as he does,” says Budd.

Should Farrell prevail against the three distributors, the implications for the companies could be enormous. George Hill, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, says the companies might run into trouble if they were forced to pay more than $10 billion annually.

Farrell is reluctant to give a settlement estimate. Polster, the judge, has issued a gag order barring lawyers from disclosing negotiation details.

Still, Farrell is developing a model that he hopes would be used to help determine funding for communities. By his reckoning, Cabell County, for example, would get $500 million over 10 years for law enforcement, treatment centers and education.

“We would like to keep the pharmaceutical companies from dumping into Cabell County. That’s why we got the law firm,” says Commissioner Bob Bailey. The sheriff, Chuck Zerkle, says any funds would address fiscal problems worsened by the crisis. “The county commission funds the senior centers, they fund the parks and things around the county,” says Zerkle. “There’s no money to fund those things.”

Yet, given the contingency fees, such a settlement might net all the law firms working with Farrell a check in the billions. Farrell, who drives around Huntington in a black Chevrolet Silverado pickup, concedes that folks in his hometown might look askance at such a payday. Yes, communities like Huntington would win. But the lawyers would profit handsomely, too—and ordinary people might not view that kindly

The thought gives Farrell pause, and then the moment passes. After all, he may never see a dime from any of this. In the meantime, he’s working away—and people in his hometown are dying.

“My mother has told me since a very young age—she would whisper in my ear—that God has a special plan for me,” Farrell says. “I think, deep and intrinsically, perhaps what I am doing now is it.”

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The Hill: The ‘forgotten people’ of the opioid epidemic 24 Apr 2020, 2:30 am

This article was originally published by The Hill.

Members of the Seneca Nation of Indians and others from the surrounding western New York community gathered together in mourning.

They rang a bell and lit lanterns, symbols of loved ones affected by the opioid epidemic. The bell tolled dozens of times, honoring the dead.

Lanterns flew up into the evening sky.

“That bell would just not stop ringing,” Todd Gates, the Seneca Nation of Indians president, recalled nearly a year later, his voice breaking. “It’s tough.”

American Indians are among those the opioid epidemic has hit the hardest, though scant attention has been paid to how the crisis is ripping through their communities.

At least 20 tribes have formally sued opioid manufacturers and distributors, with at least 10 more suits under contract and expected to be filed soon. They’re joining a long list of hundreds of cities, counties and other health care stakeholders who have sued, an effort to recoup money spent fighting the opioid epidemic and force new reforms aimed at turning the tide of the crisis.

“Native Americans are a forgotten people when it comes to this crisis,” said Jeff Gaddy, an attorney at Levin Papantonio who has been working to file opioid lawsuits, including for the Seneca Nation of Indians. “The Senecas, as well as other tribes across the country, are refusing to accept that and filing lawsuits to hold big pharma accountable for the harms that they’ve caused.”

Among the allegations, the lawsuits claim that companies were aggressively marketing opioids while downplaying the risk of addiction, and shipping suspiciously large volumes of painkillers without alerting authorities.

The hundreds of lawsuits have been consolidated in Cleveland in the hopes of saving time and money and ensuring pre-trial rulings are consistent. Judge Dan Polster oversees them all, in what’s known as a multidistrict litigation.

To some, it was imperative the tribes join the litigation — and early.

Tom Rodgers, a voting rights advocate and lobbyist who blew the whistle on the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, is working to ensure Native Americans have a seat at the negotiating table. He “could not have history repeat itself,” Rodgers wrote in an email, referencing what he refers to as tribes’ exclusion from the major tobacco settlements of the 1990s.

State attorneys general sued tobacco companies in the 1990s, in part to recover money the states were spending due to the toll tobacco was taking on people’s health.

In major settlements, tobacco companies agreed to pay states billions of dollars. They also agreed to restrict cigarette advertising, create a national tobacco public education foundation and ditch several industry initiatives.

About 20 tribes filed a lawsuit against the tobacco industry in 1999, alleging they were unfairly excluded from the hefty master settlement with 46 states and territories, and sought more than $1 billion in damages.

None of those tribes had attempted to participate in the states’ and the tobacco companies’ settlement negotiations, according to court records. In 2001, a court of appeals dismissed the case as not having standing to challenge the agreement.

Mike Moore, the Mississippi attorney general at the time, filed the first state lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers and his case was settled before the master settlement. He pushed back on the notion that tribes, along with cities and counties, were unfairly excluded from the settlements in general: The tribes and local governments didn’t receive settlement funds because the states were seeking to recoup money they were spending on government services, such as Medicaid, Moore said, and the tribes didn’t pursue litigation.

The opioid lawsuits have often been compared with the major tobacco settlements, since both aim to solve a large-scale public health problem. Yet, the opioid epidemic is exceedingly complex.

With tobacco, there weren’t needles laying in the streets, or a vast need to increase the number of addiction clinics across the country, or an illicit drug market, like that of heroin, said Mike Fuller, a partner at McHugh Fuller.

“That’s why the opioid issue is so much bigger, and it’s so important that we be mindful of that in the litigation and make sure that what we’re doing is focused on addressing the problem and cleaning up our communities,” he said.

In referencing the opioid epidemic and Native Americans, Rodgers “witnessed how incredibly broken the governmental response was when it came to the necessary financial resources to heal our people in order to deal with this incredibly immoral, unethical and perhaps illegal behavior by so many,” he said. “Given this brokenness, I knew the only way to truly obtain justice was to seek to tell our story before a judge or jury.”

Roughly a year ago, Rodgers and a consortium of six law firms began having conversations with tribes about suing manufacturers and distributors, according to Rodgers. The group represents several hundred governmental plaintiffs.

The consortium — along with the Skikos firm that recently began working with Rodgers — has already filed lawsuits for three tribes, with another 10 coming soon, according to Rodgers. The tribes span areas across the U.S., from New York to California and North Dakota to Oklahoma.

At least 18 other tribes have filed lawsuits, electronic court records show.

“At the end of the day, I absolutely believe that it’s important for the tribes to be heard, be recognized and be compensated just like the rest,” said Fuller, who is also working with tribes and whose firm is part of the consortium.

With its wide array of plaintiffs, the opioid litigation already looks markedly different than the tobacco settlements. And if the effort does produce a settlement, then “it needs to be a global one,” Polster, the judge, said in an interview.

“I would envision that if there is a settlement, the tribes that have filed cases would be part of that settlement, and obviously they are part of any discussions going on as a result,” he told The Hill.

The lawsuits tend to focus on manufacturers and the three big distributors — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson.

In a statement, AmerisourceBergen said it has reported and halted thousands of suspicious-seeming orders and refused service to customers at risk of diversion, in addition to providing the Drug Enforcement Administration with daily reports.

McKesson echoed similar sentiments, stating that it is committing $100 million to a foundation it recently launched to combat the opioid crisis.

Cardinal Health directed The Hill to the distributors trade association. “Given our role, the idea that distributors are responsible for the number of opioid prescriptions written defies common sense and lacks understanding of how the pharmaceutical supply chain actually works and is regulated,” John Parker, a senior vice president of the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, said in a statement. “Those bringing lawsuits would be better served addressing the root causes, rather than trying to redirect blame through litigation.”

Several manufacturers named in lawsuits, such as Purdue Pharma and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, said they’re committed to helping solve the crisis. In a statement, Purdue Pharma described actions the company has taken, such as developing medications with abuse-deterrent properties.

Janssen Pharmaceuticals pushed back on the allegations, arguing, “Our actions in the marketing and promotion of these medicines were appropriate and responsible. The labels for our prescription opioid pain medicines provide information about their risks and benefits, and the allegations made against our company are baseless and unsubstantiated.”

An estimated 115 people die per day of an overdose involving an opioid. The judge from Ohio, a state facing one of the worst opioid crises, has made clear he wants to do more than “just moving money around.”

“My objective is to do something meaningful to abate this crisis and to do it in 2018,” Polster said at the outset of the case’s first hearing in early January.

He expressed confidence that the litigation “can do something to dramatically reduce the number of opioids that are being disseminated, manufactured and distributed” and also “get some amount of money to the government agencies for treatment.”

Communities across the country have been grappling with how to increase the availability of treatment for opioid addiction, and tribes are no different. They, like the rest of the nation, are struggling with a shortage of behavioral health providers, said Dr. Joel Beckstead, the acting director of the Division of Behavioral Health at the Indian Health Service.

In Wyoming, a recovery center servicing the Northern Arapaho Tribe and tribal members in the surrounding community wishes it had resources to help people the moment they decide to seek treatment. But there aren’t enough certified providers to see clients, or enough rooms to see them in, or enough funding to launch more programs at the White Buffalo Recovery Center.

An estimated eight to 10 people are on the waitlist for intensive outpatient treatment, a program capped at 30 people per day, according to Sunny Goggles, the director of the White Buffalo Recovery Center.

“We are barely hitting the top of our need when it comes to substance abuse services,” Goggles said. “We have a large area to cover. We have a large amount of abuse.”

The Northern Arapaho Tribe has filed a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors, and if settlement money comes, Goggles hopes that could help fill some of the funding gaps, and also bolster prevention efforts.

Opioids contributed to the deaths of several hundred Native Americans in 2016 — a crisis that has shaken their communities. It’s one that has a root in generational trauma extending back many years, Beckstead, of the Indian Health Service, said.

Grappling with the effects of trauma, such as a history of ancestors who were removed from their land, “it creates in the current generation sometimes a tendency to turn to things like opioids to try and cope with those kinds of things,” Beckstead said.

In 2016, American Indians and Alaska Natives had the second highest rate of opioid overdose deaths of any race — an estimated 14 fatalities per 100,000 people. The death rate among white people is 17.5 per 100,000; 10.3 for black Americans; 6.1 for Hispanics and 1.5 for Asians and Pacific Islanders, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But the numbers don’t tell the full story. For Native Americans, the underreporting is far greater than that of other groups, perhaps as high as 30 percent, according to Robert Anderson, the CDC’s chief for its mortality statistics branch.

The crisis has taken a toll on communities, such as where Gates, the president of the Seneca Nation of Indians, lives. He’s seen the impact of the opioid epidemic firsthand, as the leader of a tribe of more than 8,000 people. He knows what it’s like to lose loved ones to the crisis.

To him, the Seneca’s lawsuit is about getting the money needed to fund prevention and treatment. Also, it’s about trying to stop the deaths.

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MetroNews: Trial date set in Cabell-Huntington opioid trial; parties disagree on discovery issues 24 Apr 2020, 2:30 am

This article was originally published by MetroNews.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The opioid lawsuit filed by Huntington and Cabell County against the “Big Three” drug distributors has a trial date.

U.S. District Judge David Faber announced at the end of a 55-minute status hearing Thursday at the Byrd Federal Courthouse in Charleston that the trial would begin Aug. 31. Faber has also ruled the trial will be a bench trial.

Attorneys for Huntington and Cabell County had hoped for a June trial date for their claims against Cardinal Health, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen but Faber opted to give the defense more time to complete discovery efforts.

Lead plaintiffs attorney Paul Farrell of Huntington said it’s good to have the distributors “on the clock.”

“What we firmly believe is that the sooner we get a trial date the sooner that they’ll (settle). We asked for June we got late August—so we’ll be ready,” Farrell told MetroNews outside the courthouse after Thursday’s hearing.

The lawsuit, filed in 2017, blames the “Big Three” for allegedly fueling the crisis by distributing nearly 100 million opioid pills in Cabell County over a 10-year period. The case was part of a group of similar cases being considered in federal court in Cleveland but was released back to U.S. District Court in West Virginia’s Southern District late last year.

Cardinal Health lead attorney Enu Mainigi asked Faber for more time to prepare for the trial.

“We need a trial date that is reasonable and consistent with the discovery that needs to be done. Third-party discovery takes time,” Mainigi told Faber. “Trial dates are being set all over the country.”

Faber originally wanted to start the trial on Aug. 24 but Mainigi said a California-based opioid trial was happening around the same time that needed her attention. Faber gave her an additional week.

Mainigi and other attorneys for the opioid distributors told Faber the discovery phase of the case is far from being completed.

“We have a very narrow piece of the discovery pie,” she said. “Substantial discovery still needs to be done.”

The plaintiffs said their discovery, which includes hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, is almost completed. Farrell said the drug distributors are dragging their feet on purpose.

“We have gone through an extraordinary amount of effort to produce the documents we’re required to produce and to sit there in the courtroom and to hear them try to disparage the effort of the men and women that are dedicating their lives to fight this epidemic is upsetting,” Farrell said.

The defense claimed it was still in search of third party discovery from places like Huntington City Council and the Cabell-Huntington Health Department. That brought a response from Faber.

“How is all of this relevant? It seems to me this can be a never-ending quest,” Faber said.

Faber said he would like to have all discovery done before he begins the trial.

Farrell predicted the drug companies would continue to seek delays.

“They will not move unless you make them move and that’s we spend every day doing–how to make them move,” Farrell said.

He said a trial date and a bench trial should help get the case resolved.

“I firmly believe that this case will resolve if we get a trial date. So in order to get a trial date as soon as possible, we agreed to wave the jury trial,” Farrell said.

Faber said he plans to give each side six weeks to present their cases. The plaintiffs will have five weeks beginning Aug. 31. The trial will resume Nov. 2 with an additional seven weeks of testimony.

Also Thursday, Faber told the parties he plans on following the law already established in opioid cases by Cleveland-based U.S. District Judge Dan Polster. He will allow the plaintiffs and defense to brief the issue before making a final decision.

Faber said he’ll also rule on the defense claim that previous settlements involving the state and the drug distributors cover political subdivisions. Farrell said the issue has already been decided and doesn’t need another ruling. Faber did set a briefing schedule.

Faber will also rule before the trial on the issue of standing and the statute of limitations in connection with the case.

Faber also said Thursday he plans to appoint a Special Master to oversee the discovery and other issues before the trial. Faber said he’s considering former Berkeley County Circuit Judge Christopher Wilkes or former Greenbrier County Circuit Judge Jim Rowe for the position. He also may opt to go with someone outside the case.

Meanwhile, negotiations continue with the distributors in connection with the all of the cases filed in state and federal court. The state’s Mass Litigation Panel had two days of mediation talks last week. One of the settlement numbers being discussed is $1.25 billion.Rusty Webb

Attorney Rusty Webb, who is representing Huntington in the opioid lawsuits, said he would consider the $1.25 billion a “fair proposal.” He said the key will be how the money is distributed.

“I like the initial national allocation based on population, death and opioid distribution,” Webb said.

The next hearing in front of the state Mass Litigation Panel is March 13 in Charleston. A trial date for the state cases could be set at that time.

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Reuters: Opioid settlement talks fail, landmark trial expected Monday 23 Apr 2020, 9:15 pm

This article was originally published by Reuters.

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – A landmark trial over the U.S. opioid epidemic is on track to begin on Monday after drug companies and local governments failed to agree on a settlement on Friday that had been expected to be valued at around $50 billion.

Top executives of the largest U.S. drug distributors and drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd left a Cleveland courthouse on Friday and lawyers for states and thousands of local governments said there was no agreement.

The parties and four state attorneys general had been summoned by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who could be seen on Friday shuttling between the groups in separate rooms.

Paul Hanly, a lawyer for local governments that brought the bulk of the thousands of lawsuits stemming from the addiction crisis, said his team “fully expect” a trial to begin Monday.

Talks featured chief executive officers from drug distributors AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp. Teva, which is based in Israel, also sent a team, as did Walgreen Boots Alliance Inc, a pharmacy chain.

Hanly said local governments which brought the bulk of the 2,600 lawsuits were “not on the same page” as the state attorneys general involved in the talks.

After nearly 11 hours of negotiations, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told reporters it was “profoundly disappointing” that local governments would not go along with a settlement he valued at $48 billion, including $22 billion in cash and $26 billion in products and services.

The chief executive of small drug distributor Henry Schein Inc also attended talks.

The companies declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier in the week, the three big distributors and Teva proposed a $50 billion settlement, two sources told Reuters. That proposal also included Johnson & Johnson, although the healthcare conglomerate was not invited to Friday’s talks because it has already settled with the plaintiffs in Monday’s trial.

Shares in the companies rallied through the week with hopes that a settlement was within reach. After Hanly’s comments late on Friday, shares of the companies sank as much as 3% in after-market trading.

Together, the companies will be defending themselves at Monday’s trial over allegations they fueled an opioid addiction crisis that caused roughly 400,000 U.S. deaths from 1999 to 2017, according to government statistics.

The distributors have been accused of failing to flag and halt suspicious orders for opioids, while drugmakers are accused of promoting benefits of the drugs while playing down their risks.

The distributors have insisted that they were shipping FDA approved medicines prescribed by doctors. The drugmakers have also denied any wrongdoing.

Hanly said discussions would continue, although he did not expect face-to-face talks to go through the weekend.

Another attorney for local governments, Paul Farrell, said the attorneys general are attempting to decide among themselves how to allocate the settlement money, without input from the local governments.

While the cases pit governments against large companies that profited from the use of opioids, there is also tension between cities, towns and counties and their state governments over the right to bring the cases and control the settlement proceeds.

Farrell said there was also an effort underway to reach a narrow settlement with just the two Ohio counties of Cuyahoga and Summit that are the plaintiffs in Monday’s trial.

A bellwether trial gives the parties a chance to assess a jury’s reaction to the allegations, which could then shape a settlement of all the litigation.

Other defendants in lawsuits overseen by Polster include Johnson & Johnson, Mallinckrodt Plc, Endo International Plc, Walmart Inc and Allergan Plc, among others.

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, viewed as one of the main culprits in fueling the opioid crisis, is also no longer part of the Ohio trial after declaring bankruptcy.

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Charleston Gazette-Mail: WV opioid lawsuits set for trial in March 2021 24 Mar 2020, 2:46 am

This article was originally published by Charleston Gazette-Mail.

A West Virginia panel of judges has set a March 2021 trial date to hear lawsuits filed by counties, cities, towns and hospitals that seek to recoup costs stemming from the opioid epidemic from drug manufacturers and distributors.

At a status conference in Charleston Friday, Judge Alan Moats, who heads the panel, urged lawyers to narrow their arguments as to whether the drug companies’ actions caused a “public nuisance,” forcing cities and counties to lose revenue and pay untold expenses amid the addiction crisis. West Virginia has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation.

“We are going to focus like a laser on public nuisance,” Moats told a large crowd of lawyers — many from states outside West Virginia — who crowded the ceremonial courtroom at the Kanawha County Courthouse.

Counties and cities allege the drug companies saturated communities with an excessive number of prescription pain pills and failed to ensure the opioid painkillers didn’t wind up in the wrong hands. The companies counter they distributed drugs only to licensed pharmacies that filled prescriptions from licensed doctors.

The “Mass Litigation Panel” of judges — set up by the state Supreme Court — plans to hear the lawsuits and declare a verdict as part of a bench trial, instead of holding a jury trial, which could have lasted for months. More than 50 counties, cities, towns and hospitals have suits before the panel.

“This case has the capacity to outlast any case we’ve ever dealt with,” Moats said. “If we allow this to languish … that means our legal system has failed.”

The panel wanted to hear the opioid lawsuits sooner — as early as this fall — but decided to wait until after another similar case, filed by Cabell County and Huntington against drug distributors, goes to trial in federal court in Charleston. That non-jury trial is expected to start in August. The drug companies wanted to delay the proceedings for 18 months.

Another 70 lawsuits filed by West Virginia counties, cities and towns have been consolidated into a national opioid-related case that’s being heard in Cleveland federal court. More than 3,000 lawsuits from across the U.S. are part of that landmark litigation, which seeks to blame drug manufacturers, distributors and chain pharmacies for the opioid epidemic.

On Friday, Moats urged lawyers representing counties, cities and Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s office not to get distracted by seeking punitive damages and making claims the drug companies violated consumer protection laws.

“We’re making this more complicated than it is,” said Moats, who also serves as a circuit judge in Barbour and Taylor counties. “This can get done. I firmly believe that.”

Moats also called for a “new sense of cooperation” from attorneys on both sides.

“I know the stakes are high,” he said. “I’m asking for a new level of cooperation, a new level of civility. There’s got to be some give and take.”

The drug distributors being sued are McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen. Those companies agreed to pay a combined $72 million to settle lawsuits with the state of West Virginia in recent years, but counties and cities filed their own separate suits.

Opioid manufacturers being sued include Teva, Johnson & Johnson and Cephalon.

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Estate of Sumrall ex rel. Sumrall v. Illinois Cent. R. Co. 24 May 2018, 8:14 pm

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Matthews v. SMV Property Holdings, LLC 24 May 2018, 8:09 pm

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