Two Ohio counties and four drug companies yesterday settled a landmark lawsuit over responsibility for the opioid epidemic in a deal that could help push the parties toward a wide-ranging agreement on more than 2,400 similar claims filed across the country, the Washington Post reported. The $260 million settlement, reached just hours before opening arguments were scheduled to begin in the first federal lawsuit of the opioid era, will give Cuyahoga and Summit counties badly needed cash and anti-addiction medication. Those will be provided by mammoth opioid distributors McKesson Corp., AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health, and drug manufacturer Teva Pharmaceuticals, four of the defendants in the first case. But the agreement also may help guide the next round of negotiating as drug companies and governments that have sued them continue efforts to resolve the remaining legal actions all at once. The Ohio deal ratchets up the pressure on plaintiffs and drug companies to reach a global settlement or, some argue, to cut their own deals sooner. If the hundreds of lawsuits filed by cities, counties, Native American tribes and others continue to be settled individually, the first jurisdictions are likely to get larger payouts, attorneys said.
