Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has asked a federal appeals court to halt an upcoming bellwether trial over the opioid crisis that he called “legally flawed” and “strikes at our Republic’s core structure,” Law.com reported. In a petition for writ of mandamus filed on Friday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the attorney general argued that the two Ohio counties serving as plaintiffs in the Oct. 21 trial have no legal authority to seek relief from the opioid crisis on behalf of Ohio’s residents. The trial, scheduled to take place in Cleveland, is the first bellwether in the multidistrict litigation and follows a $572 million judgment for the state of Oklahoma in the first opioid trial in the nation. The writ asks the Sixth Circuit to halt or delay the trial until the state of Ohio concludes two separate lawsuits it filed in 2017 and 2018 against several of the same opioid manufacturers and distributors. The trial is between the counties of Cuyahoga and Summit against more than 20 defendants, including manufacturers Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson, and distributors such as McKesson Corp. and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. The two counties are asking for $8 billion. On Aug. 20, one of the defendants, Endo International, agreed to pay $10 million to settle the claims of the Ohio counties, and on Friday another, Allergan, agreed to pay $5 million. The state of Ohio highlighted those settlements in its writ as an affront to state sovereignty. Read more.
In related news, the Sackler family, which grew into one of the nation’s wealthiest dynasties through sales of the widely abused painkiller OxyContin, could emerge from a legal settlement under negotiation with its personal fortunes largely intact, the Washington Post reported. Under a plan to relinquish control of their company, Purdue Pharma, and resurrect it as a trust whose main purpose would be to combat the opioid epidemic, the Sacklers could raise most, if not all, of their personal share of the $10 billion to $12 billion agreement by selling their international drug conglomerate, Mundipharma, according to the documents and those close to the talks. Yet the proposed settlement — built on the projected value of drugs not yet on the market — offers gains for both sides if the company and more than 2,000 cities, counties, states and others that have sued Purdue and the family can craft a deal. The Stamford-Conn.-based Purdue Pharma would go into bankruptcy, and the Sacklers would be out of the drug business. They would be required to contribute $3 billion and possibly more, depending on the sale price of Mundipharma, their international drug company, over seven years. Read more.