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Opioid Litigation Daily Media Report 11/2/2017
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Ohio AG gives McKesson, others 30 days to be 'part of the solution' on addictive opioids
Nov 1, 2017 | San Francisco Business Times (CA)
By Ron Leuty
Ohio's attorney general fired off letters to the CEOs of five makers of pain-killing opioid drugs and the leaders of other healthcare companies, including San Francisco-based wholesaler McKesson Corp., to force accountability for the state's opioid epidemic. -
OH attorney general calls for opiate manufacturers to pay
Nov 1, 2017 | Newburgh Gazette (IL)
By Violet Powell
DeWine tore into the pharmaceutical industry in a speech Monday, where he announced his "Recovery Ohio" plan, a 12-point strategy to overcome the plague of opioid addiction in the state. -
OH attorney general wants opioid lawsuit settled promptly
Nov 1, 2017 | Gk Men (CA)
By Hannah Rogers
Monday, Mike DeWine announced a 12 point plan called "Recovery Ohio" to battle the growing Opioid problem. -
AG Hawley goes after corporate distributors in opioid investigation
Nov 1, 2017 | West Plains Daily Quill (MO)
By Abby Hess
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley has widened his fight against the ongoing opioid crisis with this week’s announcement he has sent civil investigative demands (CID) to three major opioid distributors. -
Missouri attorney general demands opioid distributor records
Nov 1, 2017 | Columbia Daily Tribune (MO)
By Summer Balentine
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley on Tuesday said he’s demanding documents from three major opioid distributors that he claims didn’t report suspiciously large shipments of prescription drugs. -
Janssen Must Fork Over More Employee Info In Opioid Suit
Nov 1, 2017 | Law 360
By Hannah Meisel
An Illinois federal judge on Wednesday partially granted the city of Chicago's bid to force pharmaceutical company Janssen to produce information related to marketing employees in the city's suit over the alleged misleading marketing of opioids, saying the company never explained exactly why producing the documents would be a burden. -
Quincy taking Big Pharma to court over its role in opioid epidemic
Nov 2, 2017 | Fox Boston 25 News
By Staff
Quincy is taking the opioid epidemic to court after the city announced it will sue drug makers because it claims the companies caused the sharp rise in addiction over the past several years. -
DOJ retains national legal team for claims against opioid industry
Nov 2, 2017 | Delaware State News (DE)
By Staff
The Delaware Department of Justice (DOJ) has retained a national group of attorneys and experts to investigate and, if appropriate, file suit against opioid manufacturers, opioid distributors and other entities that may have contributed to the opioid epidemic impacting Delaware, said Attorney General Matt Denn’s office on Wednesday. -
Law Firms to Represent State in Opioid Probe, Possible Litigation
Nov 2, 2017 | Delaware Law Weekly
By Tom McParland
The Delaware Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it had retained a national team of attorneys and experts to explore the possibility of litigation against companies that may have contributed to the state’s opioid epidemic. -
Quincy plans to sue big drug makers over opioid crisis
Nov 1, 2017 | Boston Globe (MA)
By Michael Levenson
Quincy, hard hit by the opioid crisis, said Wednesday it will become the first city in Massachusetts to sue the pharmaceutical industry for allegedly downplaying the dangers of opioids and flooding the market with addictive and deadly painkillers. -
Mitchell County considers joining class-action opioid lawsuit
Nov 1, 2017 | Mitchell County Press News (IA)
By Chrystal Berche
Mitchell County may join a class-action lawsuit targeting opioid manufacturers. -
Quincy To Sue Pharmaceutical Companies For Role In Opioid Crisis
Nov 2, 2017 | Quincy Patch (MA)
By Daniel Libon
The City of Quincy will be the first community in Massachusetts to sue the pharmaceutical industry for their alleged role in the opioid crisis. -
White House opioid commission calls for wide-ranging changes to anti-drug policies
Nov 1, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein
President Trump's commission on the opioid crisis called Wednesday for a nationwide system of drug courts and easier access to alternatives to opioids for people in pain, part of a wide-ranging menu of improvements it said are needed to curb the opioid epidemic. -
Time for Big Pharma to pay for damage done in Ohio (EDITORIAL)
Nov 1, 2017 | Toledo Blade (OH)
By Staff
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Toledo Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson delivered a similar message on Monday afternoon to drug makers and distributors: “Enough is enough. It is time to pay up.” -
NewsCenter 5 at 5:30 PM
Nov 2, 2017 | WCVB (ABC)
By Boston, MA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30444167?token=d34e9816-3826-4c6a-869e-0151d4ba4832 -
Boston 25 Morning News at 5AM
Nov 2, 2017 | WFXT (Fox)
By Boston, MA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30444168?token=d34e9816-3826-4c6a-869e-0151d4ba4832
OH AG Mike DeWine Opioid Initiatives
MO AG Josh Hawley Expands Investigation
Other Coverage
Commentary and FYIs
Broadcast Media Coverage
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Ohio AG gives McKesson, others 30 days to be 'part of the solution' on addictive opioids
Nov 1, 2017 | San Francisco Business Times (CA)
By Ron Leuty
Ohio's attorney general fired off letters to the CEOs of five makers of pain-killing opioid drugs and the leaders of other healthcare companies, including San Francisco-based wholesaler McKesson Corp., to force accountability for the state's opioid epidemic.
Attorney General Mike DeWine's letters Monday aren't the first moves aimed at rolling back addiction to opioids, a class of drugs that includes prescription painkillers, such as oxycodone, and the street-level drugs heroin and fentanyl. Various state attorney generals have filed lawsuits, for example, and members of Congress have requested information from companies about the marketing of those drugs.
What's more, President Donald Trump last week declared the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency, including an ad campaign. As news outlets have pointed out, however, Trump has not yet requested additional funding.
Roughly 2 million Americans are addicted to opioids, which were linked to 59,000 deaths last year. The epidemic has swept harshly through poor and rural communities.
DeWine in May filed a lawsuit against the five drug companies — Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions Inc., Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) and Allergan PLC (NYSE: AGN) — but escalated his attempts to hold companies accountable for an epidemic that DeWine said is responsible for 14 deaths in Ohio each day. He told the CEOs of the five drug companies that they have 30 days to begin settlement talks.
What's more, DeWine's similar letters to the CEOs of drug and medical products wholesalers McKesson (NYSE: MCK) and AmerisourceBergen Corp. (NYSE: ABC) and distributor Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE: CAH) presented the executives with "an opportunity" to meet with the Republican attorney general's office by the end of November to "build a response that will immediately start saving lives and preventing future deaths and suffering."
Dan Tierney, a spokesperson for DeWine's office, said DeWine is reviewing potential cases against companies in the opioid supply chain. DeWine initially targeted doctors and pharmacists — part of so-called "pill mills" — and people who got illegal prescriptions to resell opioids on the street; now, Tierney said, the focus is on drug makers, who DeWine claims knew the addictive power of prescription opioids, wholesalers and distributors."We are alleging that there's strong evidence that they created a public nuisance, and the remedy is that you must abate the nuisance," Tierney said. "Put in human terms, if we're successful in those claims, they would be found liable to clean up the problem."
A spokesperson for McKesson, which employs about 1,500 people in the Bay Area, wasn't immediately available to comment about DeWine's letter.
McKesson CEO John Hammergren, however, has said that the company has invested "considerable time and resources" to stop the diversion of opioids from needy patients with pain to addicts, hired investigators, beefed up monitoring and developed "sophisticated" analytical tools.
Hammergren has tried to shift the focus to doctors ("it really is related to how they think about the prescriptions they're providing to their patients and the quantities that they're writing in those scripts") and pharmacists. The company has pushed for electronic prescribing, where pharmacists can see in real time if a patient has received multiple prescriptions over a period of time and prescriptions can't be modified or manipulated.
Lawsuits and settlements "don't solve the problem," Hammergren told analysts last week as the company posted first-half earnings of $421 million on revenue of $103.1 billion. "What solves the problem is thinking in a broader context and putting the solutions in place that can actually prevent this from happening."
"Clearly, we have a role to play, but we don't see the patient," Hammergren said. "We don't prescribe the drugs. We don't dispense the drugs. We don't have all the data on the care, and I don't know how we can be responsible, solely, for this challenge."
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OH attorney general calls for opiate manufacturers to pay
Nov 1, 2017 | Newburgh Gazette (IL)
By Violet Powell
DeWine tore into the pharmaceutical industry in a speech Monday, where he announced his "Recovery Ohio" plan, a 12-point strategy to overcome the plague of opioid addiction in the state.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican, filed a lawsuit May targeting Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions and Allergan. "We have to target the people who created it", DeWine said. "Ohio is in crisis", DeWine, who is running for governor, said in a statement. "I am going to make them do it", DeWine said. "We have to have a sense that this is a crisis in the state of Ohio", DeWine said. Many became hooked on heroin, fentanyl and carfentanil by first becoming addicted to legal opioids such as OxyContin that drug companies encouraged doctors to prescribe, discounting their addictiveness, DeWine said. He believes they helped escalate the problem. DeWine's new recovery plan includes - among other things - more treatment options and an expansion in prevention programs. Unlike Cuyahoga County and other local governments, OH is not suing any wholesale drug distributors. About 14 Ohioans die a day from drug overdoses, the attorney general said. Create a 21st century law enforcement data infrastructure that allows real-time, statewide data sharing and brings state-of-the-art data analytics and crime prediction to every OH law enforcement agency. Create at least 60 more specialized drug courts. "Despite making billions, billions of dollars from these drugs, they have done comparatively little to help those with substance abuse disorders", he said. A cabinet position reporting the governor dedicated exclusively on the state's opioids problem. He also suggested a statewide media campaign and an expansion in early intervention programs to target more OH families and children in foster care. Officials in OH say opioids are also the main driver of a 19 percent spike in the number of kids removed from parental custody to foster care since 2010.
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OH attorney general wants opioid lawsuit settled promptly
Nov 1, 2017 | Gk Men (CA)
By Hannah Rogers
Monday, Mike DeWine announced a 12 point plan called "Recovery Ohio" to battle the growing Opioid problem.
DeWine said his office sent letters to the five pharmaceutical companies Monday - Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Johnson & Johnson and Allergan, formerly known as Actavis, saying they had 30 days to come forward with settlement solutions or he would add pressure.
DeWine also said that drug distributors should also be part of a settlement.
"Ohio is in crisis", DeWine, who is running for governor, said in a statement. And I will do everything within my power to make them do that.
"No announcement today on a lawsuit against the distributors", DeWine said.
"Do you see them coming forward with a huge education plan that they could roll out, that helps the people in the state of OH, helps kids from becoming addicted in the future?" According to DeWine, Ohio is loosing around 15 people a day to drug overdoses deaths and half the kids in foster care are because one or both parents are drug addicts.
He agrees with the state's lawsuit and said they should shoulder their responsibility for the drug epidemic, but would like to see it taken further.
DeWine said he has a twelve point OH recovery plan.
Unlike Cuyahoga County and other local governments, OH is not suing any wholesale drug distributors.
Create a 21st century law enforcement data infrastructure that allows real-time, statewide data-sharing and brings state-of-the-art data analytics and crime prediction to every law enforcement agency in Ohio.
Empower employers to help employees with substance use disorder to seek treatment while remaining employed.
A cabinet position reporting the governor dedicated exclusively on the state's opioids problem.
Implement proven Kindergarten-12th grade drug prevention education in all OH schools.
Officials in OH say opioids are also the main driver of a 19 percent spike in the number of kids removed from parental custody to foster care since 2010.
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AG Hawley goes after corporate distributors in opioid investigation
Nov 1, 2017 | West Plains Daily Quill (MO)
By Abby Hess
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley has widened his fight against the ongoing opioid crisis with this week’s announcement he has sent civil investigative demands (CID) to three major opioid distributors.
The demands, the equivalent of a subpoena, require the distributors to provide documents and information relevant to the Attorney General Office’s ongoing investigation into the pharmaceutical industry’s involvement in the opioid epidemic that last year claimed 908 Missourians’ lives, according to the State Department of Health and Human Services. That is a 35 percent increase over 2015.
The companies named in AG Hawley’s investigation are AmerisourceBergen Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corporation.
“It has become clear that opioid distributors had opportunities to stem the tide of the opioid crisis, but instead chose to look the other way while making millions of dollars in profit,” Hawley said. “Opioid distributors will not receive a free pass from my office. I am committed to holding all parties responsible for this epidemic and working toward solutions that will protect and heal our communities.”
Each of the three CIDs Hawley’s office shared with the Quill is identical save for the names of the companies involved. Each explains an investigation is being conducted to find whether the companies named have engaged in deceptive practices in connection with the sale or advertisement of merchandise, as outlined in Mo. Revised Statute 407.020.
“This investigation will inquire into the activities and representations of Subject in connection with the sale, distribution, and marketing of opioids,” the documents read, with “Subject” referring to the above-named companies. “The Attorney General has reason to believe that Subject's conduct in the aforementioned areas and others involves deception, fraud, false promise, misrepresentation, unfair practices, and/or the concealment, suppression, or omission of material facts within the scope of the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.”
NOT THE FIRST TIME
This is not the first time these companies have been subject to legal scrutiny. In 2012, West Virginia’s attorney general sued AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal, along with several smaller companies, for stricter distribution practices pertaining to painkillers and scheduled drugs. In a 2015 article on the ongoing case, the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette-Mail said McKesson Corporation was also under investigation by the state’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey.
According to the Gazette-Mail, citing documents filed by state attorneys, between 2007 and 2012, 11 drug distributors shipped 59.9 million oxycodone pills and 140.6 million hydrocodone pills to West Virginia. The Gazette-Mail’s coverage of the suit and opioid epidemic would win its reporter, Eric Eyre, a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for courageous reporting in the face of powerful opposition.
The bipartisan Energy and Commerce Congressional Committee in May launched an investigation in response to the Gazette’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the lawsuit. This month, the committee sent a letter to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) continuing the investigation and requesting information from the agency.
The letter reported the committee’s research indicates alarming increases in the prevalence of opioids as distributed by the wholesalers. According to the committee, 886 West Virginians fatally overdosed on opioids in 2016.
Since West Virginia filed that first lawsuit, many states and local governments nationwide have joined in the fight.
GOING AFTER MANUFACTURERS, TOO
In June, AG Hawley filed one of the largest lawsuits in Missouri history against three opioid manufacturers alleging these manufacturers fraudulently misrepresented the serious risks posed by opioids. The lawsuit named Purdue Pharma, Endo Health and Janssen Pharmaceuticals. The office was among the first State Attorney General offices to file a lawsuit addressing this crisis.
Those three companies feature prominently on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Extended-Release and Long-Acting Opioid Anagelsics Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) list.
Purdue Pharma is included in five separate listings for its products: Butrans, a buprenorphine patch; Hysingla, hydrocodone; MSContin, morphine; OxyContin, oxycodone and Targiniq, oxycodone and naloxone.
Endo Health is listed twice for Opana, an oxymorphone tablet, and morphine, manufactured by Vintage Pharmaceuticals doing business as Qualitest Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Endo.
Janssen Pharmaceuticals has only one listing. That company is the manufacturer of the Duragesic fentanyl patch.
The drugs’ inclusion on the REMS list subject them to FDA-issued warnings against addiction, abuse and misuse; life-threatening slow or shallow breathing; accidental ingestion of the medication; and interference with a particular liver enzyme’s ability to oxidize toxins or drugs to remove them from the body.
Added this year is the newest warning of the possibility of Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome. The FDA’s revised indication, or instructions for the drugs’ use, shows that they are to be used “for the management of pain severe enough to require daily, around-the-clock, long-term opioid treatment and for which alternative treatment options are inadequate.”
In August, following AG Hawley’s June action, the office sent Civil Investigative Demands to seven other opioid manufacturers. The documents requested in the CIDs will help determine how widespread the fraud is and whether other pharmaceutical companies need to be targeted for their contribution to Missouri’s opioid crisis.
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Missouri attorney general demands opioid distributor records
Nov 1, 2017 | Columbia Daily Tribune (MO)
By Summer Balentine
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley on Tuesday said he’s demanding documents from three major opioid distributors that he claims didn’t report suspiciously large shipments of prescription drugs.
Hawley said his office sent requests backed by the force of law to AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson as part of a broader effort to investigate the opioid crisis. The attorney general said about 500 people died in Missouri from opioid overdoses or complications from opioid use in 2015.
Hawley said companies are required by law to report suspicious opioid shipments, but there’s evidence to suggest the distributors he’s investigating looked the other way instead of raising alarms.
He’s trying to get more information through the document request, which includes a request for communications between the company and the Drug Enforcement Administration going back to 2012.
“The sheer volume that they have delivered to multiple locations is inherently suspicious,” Hawley said. “The evidence suggests that these companies chose to look the other way, oversupply pharmacies and other outlets and make millions of dollars in profits.”
Officials in Louisville, Ky., are suing the three companies over similar allegations that the distributors failed to monitor, identify and report suspicious activity.
Spokespeople for McKesson and AmerisourceBergen in response both said the companies want to engage with stakeholders to address the opioid crisis.
“Beyond our reporting and immediate halting of tens of thousands of potentially suspicious orders, we provide daily reports to the DEA that detail the quantity, type, and the receiving pharmacy of every single order of these products that we distribute,” AmerisourceBergen spokesman Gabe Weissman said in a statement. “Our goal has been — and continues to be — to do everything within our power as a distributor to mitigate the diversion of these drugs without interfering with clinical decisions made by doctors, who interact directly with patients and decide what treatments are most appropriate for their care.”
Cardinal Health didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Hawley’s latest action is part of broader efforts by him and other Missouri elected officials to address opioid misuse. In June, he sued Endo Pharmaceuticals, Purdue Pharma, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals for allegedly misrepresenting the risks posed by opioids.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, whom Republican Hawley is trying to unseat next year, also has outlined the opioid crisis as a top priority. She requested documents from AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson in July.
While the requests differ, both asked for documentation of opioids sold in Missouri. Hawley said he didn’t speak with McCaskill’s office about his later request.
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Janssen Must Fork Over More Employee Info In Opioid Suit
Nov 1, 2017 | Law 360
By Hannah Meisel
An Illinois federal judge on Wednesday partially granted the city of Chicago's bid to force pharmaceutical company Janssen to produce information related to marketing employees in the city's suit over the alleged misleading marketing of opioids, saying the company never explained exactly why producing the documents would be a burden.
The city last month had asked the court to compel the addition of 10 Janssen employees on the company's marketing team likely to have documents related to Chicago’s claims that the drug company and others misleadingly marketed opioids as safe. The city told the court it should be allowed to seek those documents from the 10 employees, although Janssen had refused to add them to the list of those whose electronic records are to be searched as part of discovery.
In a one-page order on Wednesday, federal Magistrate Judge Young B. Kim partially granted the city's motion to compel, ordering Janssen to add six of the 10 employees to the list of data custodians to be searched.
"There is ample information to establish that the accounts of these six custodians should be searched for the reasons argued by plaintiff, but Janssen never explained to plaintiff in detail why a search of their accounts would yield mostly duplicate documents and why Janssen is unable to de−dupe the search result to identify only unique documents," Judge Kim wrote.
But Judge Kim denied the city's motion for the four remaining support individuals with initials HM, CI, JH and LB, limiting the city's search of electronically stored data of the marketing department employees.
"Although plaintiff is correct that Janssen did not specify the exact burden it must bear to search these accounts, the information it has provided about them is sufficient for the court to find that spending resources looking into their electronic drawers is not sensible," Judge Kim wrote.
In its motion to compel the search last month, the city alleged Janssen was being particularly difficult in cooperating with discovery, noting that of the over 125 custodians whose files the city wants to search, Janssen had only agreed to search 17 custodians. In contrast, co-defendant Endo agreed to search 62 custodians, while another drug company in the case, Actavis, agreed to search 43 custodians.
The city argued that Janssen has not supported its claims that Chicago's requests for discovery were too burdensome.
"Janssen further has complained of the unspecified 'burden' of searching the files of additional custodians," Chicago said in its October motion to compel. "Janssen offers no specifics in support of this argument. It has not quantified the additional data residing in the custodians’ electronic files. It has not shared with the city any additional cost supposedly required to comply with adding additional custodians. It merely argues that it has collected “nearly a terabyte” of data from unspecified sources and therefore refuses to collect and search anymore."
Chicago’s suit is one of a number filed by municipalities over drug companies' responsibility for the ongoing opioid epidemic, in addition to one filed on behalf of a Cherokee tribe and at least one proposed class action in Arkansas. More than 40 state attorneys general have also launched a joint investigation into at least half a dozen drugmakers and distributors.
In addition to Janssen, Endo and Actavis, drug companies Allergan, McKesson and Teva are also defendants in the case, while other companies have been dismissed.
Representatives for the parties could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The city is represented by Edward Siskel, Thomas McNulty and Fiona Burke of the city of Chicago, Linda Singer, Elizabeth Smith, David I. Ackerman and Jeffrey Nelson of Motley Rice and Kenneth A. Wexler and Thomas A. Doyle of Wexler Wallace LLP.
Janssen and Johnson & Johnson are represented by Charles C. Lifland, Esteban Rodriguez, Dave Roberts and Seth Baglin of O’Melveny & Myers LLP, Carolyn J. Kubotaof Covington & Burling LLP and Michael P. Doss and Scott D. Stein of Sidley Austin LLP.
Purdue Pharma LP is represented by R. Ryan Stoll, Gretchen M. Wolf, Lindsey Sieling, Michael S. Bailey and Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, Robert S. Hoff of Wiggin & Dana LLP and Mark S. Cheffo, Sheila L. Birnbaum and Hayden A. Coleman of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.
Teva and Cephalon are represented by J. Gordon Cooney Jr., Tinos Diamantatos, Jane Dudzinski, Megan Braden, Steven A. Reed and Jeremy Menkowitz of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP.
Endo is represented by Jonathan L. Stern, Steven G. Reade, Joshua M. Davis, Joanna G. Persio and Sean O. Morris of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP.
Actavis is represented by Donna M. Welch, Martin L. Roth, Timothy W. Knapp, Jennifer G. Levy and Jason R. Parrish of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
The case is City of Chicago v. Purdue Pharma LP et al., case number 1:14-cv-04361, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. -
Quincy taking Big Pharma to court over its role in opioid epidemic
Nov 2, 2017 | Fox Boston 25 News
By Staff
Quincy is taking the opioid epidemic to court after the city announced it will sue drug makers because it claims the companies caused the sharp rise in addiction over the past several years.
The city has been hit hard by the opioid crisis, much like so many other cities and towns in New England.
But now Quincy said it is the first major city in Massachusetts to sue big pharma for its role in the opioid epidemic.
Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch said he’s hired the same law firm that took on big tobacco and asbestos claims.
Koch said big pharma marketed opiate-based prescriptions in a way that downplayed the dangers of addiction.
“We have to be willing to fight this crisis on every front, and holding the drug industry accountable for its deceptive and dangerous practices is an important one,” Koch said.
Koch said he wants the lawsuit to get big pharma to change its ways and also to get some money back for a city that’s spending more each year on drug-related treatments and education.
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DOJ retains national legal team for claims against opioid industry
Nov 2, 2017 | Delaware State News (DE)
By Staff
The Delaware Department of Justice (DOJ) has retained a national group of attorneys and experts to investigate and, if appropriate, file suit against opioid manufacturers, opioid distributors and other entities that may have contributed to the opioid epidemic impacting Delaware, said Attorney General Matt Denn’s office on Wednesday.
“The goal is very simple,” Mr. Denn said in a release. “We will make sure that any entities responsible under Delaware law for creating this crisis help us solve it, and that they stop any practices still going on that are contributing to this crisis.”
The lead law firm retained, Fields PLLC, has already filed national litigation against the opioid industry on behalf of the Cherokee Nation. The other firms working with Fields are Gilbert LLP, Connolly Gallagher LLP and Dolt, Thompson, Shepherd & Conway. The team includes both Delaware attorneys and attorneys with subject matter expertise from around the country, including former Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway. Former Deputy Assistant DEA Administrator Joseph Rannazzisi, who led the DEA’s Diversion Control Division and recently focused national attention on Congressional action to water down federal drug interdiction laws, will serve as a consulting member of the team.
“Deaths from opioids have escalated dramatically over the past twenty years and become the public health crisis of the 21st Century,” David Humes, board member of Delaware advocacy group atTAcK Addiction said in a release. “Should the investigation show evidence of wrongdoing, these firms must be held accountable and penalized for those deaths, the devastation they have caused families and provide treatment to those still in the throes of addiction.”
The selection of the law firms took place pursuant to a publicly-posted Request for Proposals, which prompted fourteen responses. The retained law firms, which were selected by a committee that included DOJ attorneys and a representative from the Department of Health and Social Services, will bear the expense of the investigation and litigation and will be compensated from any eventual recovery that the state may receive.
“I appreciate the hard work that the selection committee did in finding such an experienced and talented team to pursue these claims against the opioid industry,” Mr. Denn said. “This will give us an ideal combination: the ability to act quickly and decisively as an independent state, along with the legal expertise and investigative resources necessary to pursue a matter of this magnitude involving companies with enormous resources.”
Under the retention agreement with the law firms, the DOJ will retain decision-making authority over all facets of the investigation and any litigation, including decisions about filing and settling lawsuits.
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Law Firms to Represent State in Opioid Probe, Possible Litigation
Nov 2, 2017 | Delaware Law Weekly
By Tom McParland
The Delaware Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it had retained a national team of attorneys and experts to explore the possibility of litigation against companies that may have contributed to the state’s opioid epidemic.
Attorney General Matt Denn said that Fields, a Washington, D.C.-based firm currently suing opioid manufacturers and distributors on behalf of the Cherokee Nation, would lead the effort to investigate similar firms for potential wrongdoing that may expose them to civil liability under Delaware law.
The legal team will also include attorneys from Gilbert LLP, Connolly Gallagher and Dolt, Thompson, Shepherd & Conway. Joseph Rannazzisi, a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official at the heart of an expose by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” on Congressional actions to water down federal drug interdiction laws, would serve as a consulting member on the team, Denn said.
“This will give us an ideal combination: the ability to act quickly and decisively as an independent state, along with the legal expertise and investigative resources necessary to pursue a matter of this magnitude involving companies with enormous resources,” Denn said in a statement.
“The goal is very simple. We will make sure that any entities responsible under Delaware law for creating this crisis help us solve it, and that they stop any practices still going on that are contributing to this crisis.”
Denn said the DOJ will retain all decision-making authority over any litigation or settlements stemming from the probe, and the firms would be compensated from any eventual recovery the state may receive.
According to the statement, the four firms were chosen by a panel of DOJ attorneys and a representative from the Delaware Department of Health and Social Service, tasked with reviewing 14 responses to a June 23 notice seeking special legal counsel to represent the state in the investigation.
The announcement comes as Delaware is dealing with rising death tolls and increasing costs associated with opioid addiction. State officials have cited statistics showing that overall overdose deaths in Delaware spiked 38 percent from 228 in 2015—then the 12th highest in the nation—to 308 in 2016. Many of those deaths, Denn has said, are linked to the rise of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Denn, who is not running for re-election in 2018, has made combating the crisis a central issue for his office, and the General Assembly in May passed a package of bills, with Denn’s backing, to decrease opioid overprescription and remove barriers for people seeking treatment for substance abuse.
David Humes, a board member of the Delaware advocacy group atTAcK Addiction, said Wednesday that it was time for companies complicit in the crisis to be held accountable for their roles in allowing it happen.
“Deaths from opioids have escalated dramatically over the past 20 years and became the public health crisis of the 21st century,” Humes said in a statement. “Should the investigation show evidence of wrongdoing, these firms must be held accountable and penalized for those deaths, the devastation they have caused families and provide treatment to those still in the throes of addiction.”
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Quincy plans to sue big drug makers over opioid crisis
Nov 1, 2017 | Boston Globe (MA)
By Michael Levenson
Quincy, hard hit by the opioid crisis, said Wednesday it will become the first city in Massachusetts to sue the pharmaceutical industry for allegedly downplaying the dangers of opioids and flooding the market with addictive and deadly painkillers.
With its lawsuit, Quincy will join a growing number of cities, counties, and states — including Chicago, Seattle, and Ohio — that have turned to civil litigation in an attempt to force drug manufacturers to change potentially deceptive marketing practices and to recoup public funds spent on battling the addiction crisis.
Mayor Thomas P. Koch said Quincy is acting out of a sense of frustration with the ongoing toll of the epidemic. Quincy became one of the first cities in the country to give the overdose antidote Narcan to its first responders, in 2010 and has tripled the size of its drug unit and sponsored a treatment center. Still, the city of 94,000 has been wracked by 163 opioid-related deaths over the past five years.
“The problem we have today started in the medicine cabinet, and I’ve got to believe companies, when they did all their research, had to know the potential for some of this addiction,” Koch said Wednesday. “It was so loosey-goosey, right down to the doctors distributing these like M&Ms.”
Drug companies are likely to argue that they are several steps removed from the opioid crisis because they sell a legal product licensed by the Food and Drug Administration to distributors, who sell it to pharmacies and doctors, who give it to patients who misuse it, said Richard C. Ausness, a University of Kentucky law professor, who has written about opioid litigation.
“The drug companies, at least initially, will fight this, and they have been, like trench warfare,” Ausness said, adding that companies may ultimately declare bankruptcy or seek to limit liability by selling their opioid businesses. “This is going to be a long-term struggle, and I’m not sure there are going to be any winners.”
Jodi L. Avergun, a lawyer at the Washington firm Cadwalader who has represented drug companies in other lawsuits, said Quincy must prove the makers of a medication, prescribed by doctors to treat acute pain, can be held liable for “somebody who then buys heroin that’s adulterated with illegal fentanyl.”
“To hold the drug manufacturers responsible for that is a very tall order,” said Avergun, a former federal prosecutor and chief of staff at the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Quincy’s lawsuit is being handled by Linda Singer, former attorney general of the District of Columbia, who has brought opioid lawsuits on behalf of Santa Clara, Calif., and other jurisdictions. She works for the Washington law firm Motley Rice, which will not charge Quincy a fee but will collect a percentage of any settlement or damages the industry pays.
Singer said Quincy plans to file its suit in several weeks and has not yet identified the companies it will target or the specific claims it will make. But other cities and states have argued, she said, that drug companies can be held liable for opioid-related deaths because they understated the risks and overstated the benefits of opioids to treat chronic pain. Opiod marketing, she said, was also misleading and influenced doctors, who overprescribed it.
“To mismarket a drug that addicts you — that patients can’t get off — that’s particularly culpable conduct,” Singer said.
PhRMA, the trade association that represents the drug industry, declined to comment on Quincy’s lawsuit.
However, the association said it is working with the federal government to accelerate the development of non-opioid pain medications as well as medications to treat addiction. In September, the group announced it would support limiting the supply of opioids to seven days for acute pain.
“PhRMA is strongly committed to working with health care stakeholders, policy makers and others to help address the current opioid crisis,” the association said.
Meanwhile, the State of Massachusetts is laying the groundwork for its own potential lawsuit against the drug industry.
Attorney General Maura Healey announced in September that she was part of a 39-state coalition investigating whether drug makers misrepresented the dangers of prescription painkillers and ignored the public health risks of opioid sales.
The investigation targets a number of companies, including Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin.
Timothy D. Lytton, a Georgia State University law professor, said the litigation is patterned on a similar barrage of lawsuits that 46 states brought against the tobacco industry in the 1990s, which resulted in a historic settlement of more than $200 billion.
But such a successful outcome for the plaintiffs is not guaranteed.
Lytton pointed out that when cities sued firearms manufacturers in an attempt to hold them liable for gun deaths in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Congress responded by passing legislation backed by the NRA to protect the manufacturers from liability.
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Mitchell County considers joining class-action opioid lawsuit
Nov 1, 2017 | Mitchell County Press News (IA)
By Chrystal Berche
Mitchell County may join a class-action lawsuit targeting opioid manufacturers.
The suit is being brought on behalf of cities and towns who are choosing to sue opioid manufacturers, County Attorney Mark Walk said during the board of supervisors meeting Tuesday.
If the county chose to join it, Walk said there would be no cost.
Mitchell County Sheriff Greg Beaver said Osage has "all kinds of costs related to drugs, from crime to housing inmates."
“People get hooked on painkillers like oxycontin, and when they stop being able to get it, they switch to things like heroin," Beaver said. "Ninety percent of crimes around the county — the domestic abuses, the robberies — could be solved if we could get rid of the drugs.”
“While there have not been any deaths in Mitchell County from opioid overdoses, there have been drug arrests within the county and overdoses which have been treated at the hospital,” supervisor Shannon Paulus said. “There have also been robberies and other crimes committed, within the county, that are directly related to the pursuit, sale and purchasing of these drugs.”
A New York City firm is filing the suit and sending similar letters to cities and towns across the countries. The firm says opioid manufacturers knew there was no way the population of small towns could be supporting the amount of pills that were being sent to them.
“It should have been a red flag,” Paulus said. “I’m not surprised about the class-action suit; we have been discussing the opioid epidemic at the substance abuse coalition and how much it has grown. I feel like this is going to be a message to the manufacturers.
“They should have known, just with the amount of prescriptions going out. They convinced the medical profession of this new product, but they weren’t careful of how much of this potent drug was getting out there.
"I want it to change," Paulus said.
The supervisors were expected to revisit the potential for joining the lawsuit at this week's meeting.
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Quincy To Sue Pharmaceutical Companies For Role In Opioid Crisis
Nov 2, 2017 | Quincy Patch (MA)
By Daniel Libon
The City of Quincy will be the first community in Massachusetts to sue the pharmaceutical industry for their alleged role in the opioid crisis.
Mayor Thomas Koch announced this week that the City intends on perusing legal action against pharmaceutical companies and has signed a no-fee contract with Washington D.C.-based law firm Motley Rice. In his announcement, Koch said the industry deceptively downplayed the dangers of addiction ranging from pills to illegal drugs like heroin and fentanyl.
"We have to be willing to fight this crisis on every front, and holding the drug industry accountable for its deceptive and dangerous practices is an important one," Koch said.
Litigation will focus on targeting opioid manufacturers, distributor, and other groups or individuals that played a role in causing or spreading the crisis, according to Koch.
The no-fee contract means that the City will have to pay attorneys a percentage of any award for damages received as part of litigation.
Last year, an estimated 2,107 people in Massachusetts died from an opioid overdose. In Quincy, 42 tied in 2016 and 175 have died since 2012.
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White House opioid commission calls for wide-ranging changes to anti-drug policies
Nov 1, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein
President Trump's commission on the opioid crisis called Wednesday for a nationwide system of drug courts and easier access to alternatives to opioids for people in pain, part of a wide-ranging menu of improvements it said are needed to curb the opioid epidemic.
The commission, headed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), called for expanding drug courts — an alternative system that tries to channel substance abusers accused of crimes into treatment — into all 94 federal court jurisdictions. Currently they are in fewer than half.
The more than 50 recommendations in the draft report also include requiring doctors and others who prescribe opioids to show they have received training in the safe provision of those drugs before they can renew their licenses to handle controlled substances with the Drug Enforcement Administration. The panel also wants to mandate that providers check prescription-drug-monitoring databases to ensure that users aren't “doctor shopping” for prescription drugs. In some states, use of that technology is voluntary.
The powerful American Medical Association has expressed concern that federally mandated “one-size-fits-all” training would conflict with state requirements for education and do little to speed the end of the crisis.
The commission specifically declined to endorse the use of marijuana for pain, despite some studies suggesting that access to marijuana may decrease opioid deaths. Christie said in his cover letter to the president that research by the National Institute on Drug Abuse “found that marijuana use led to a 2½ times greater chance that the marijuana user would become an opioid user and abuser.” Christie said there is also “a lack of sophisticated outcome data on dose, potency and abuse potential for marijuana.”
Nor did the commission endorse establishing safe injection sites like those in Canada, where intravenous drug users can inject drugs under the supervision of trained personnel who prevent them from overdosing.
At the commission's final meeting, where members approved the report, Christie spoke passionately about ending the stigma surrounding drug addiction. He used the example of his mother, who was addicted to cigarettes for 55 years before she was diagnosed with lung cancer at 71. When that happened, he said, "no one told me she was getting what she deserved. No one told me they weren’t praying for her."
The governor said he doubted that would have been true if his mother had been addicted to drugs.
"Stigma is real, and it’s not something we can just talk about," he said.
Like Trump, who declared the opioid crisis a “public health emergency” six days ago, the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis identified no new funding for the drug crisis, which claims the lives of an estimated 175 people every day. But it called for block grants of substance abuse aid that would consolidate federal funding from a variety of sources and send it to cities and states that are fighting the battle on their streets.
Trump's emergency declaration, which the commission had urged along with eight other recommendations in its July interim report, allows the president to direct all federal agencies to speed aid to localities in the grip of what he called “the worst drug crisis in American history.”
One important step he signaled was a decision to have the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services waive a 1960s-era policy that blocked Medicaid payments to inpatient treatment facilities with more than 16 substance-abuse beds. That should make treatment more widely available. Trump also said the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security are strengthening package inspections in an attempt to reduce the flow of the street drug fentanyl, much of which is synthesized in China, sent to the United States and mixed with powdered heroin by dealers. On Wednesday, the commission recommended stronger penalties for fentanyl trafficking.
Trump suggested that the federal government might file suit against companies he called “bad actors,” presumably those in the pharmaceutical industry that have allowed painkillers to reach the black market. Private attorneys have already filed some lawsuits, and a coalition of 41 state attorneys general is investigating the role of some companies in the epidemic.
But the president was harshly criticized by activists and Democratic lawmakers for failing to put significant new funding into a battle that many say will require tens of billions of dollars, especially for treatment of the 21 million people with substance-abuse disorders. Only about 10 percent of them receive treatment of any kind.
Overdoses from prescription drugs have killed 200,000 people since 2000, and more than 500,000 have succumbed to overdoses of all kinds during the same period. Drug deaths are expected to exceed 60,000, a record, when final numbers are available for 2016. As the crisis has evolved, heroin and fentanyl are responsible for an ever-larger share of the deaths.
The recommendations also come almost a year after former U.S. surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy released a landmark report on addiction in the United States.
Modern treatments for addiction are effective, Murthy and other experts have noted, though relapse rates are comparable to those seen among people with other chronic diseases. For people trying to recover from an alcohol-abuse disorder, it can be four or five years before the chance of relapse drops below 15 percent.
In its interim report, Christie's commission called for a large expansion of medication-assisted treatment, which many experts have called the most effective approach and which Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has endorsed. That therapy provides users with buprenorphine, methadone and naltrexone in an attempt to wean them off harmful addictions to heroin or prescription narcotics.
Wednesday, in its final report, the commission said the government must adjust the way insurance rates are set, saying these rates currently encourage doctors to use opioid painkillers rather than physical therapy or other treatments that do not involve drugs.
Similarly, it recommended that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services eliminate questions about pain from satisfaction surveys that are used rate hospital performance. Physicians have said they feel pressure to treat pain aggressively, often with drugs, so they are not penalized on such surveys. The start of the opioid epidemic in the early 2000s is widely blamed on the overprescription of opioid medications.
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Time for Big Pharma to pay for damage done in Ohio (EDITORIAL)
Nov 1, 2017 | Toledo Blade (OH)
By Staff
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Toledo Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson delivered a similar message on Monday afternoon to drug makers and distributors: “Enough is enough. It is time to pay up.”
The pharmaceutical industry has played a major role in facilitating the opioid crisis that has ravaged Ohio communities. It is way past time that Big Pharma admits culpability and begins negotiations with the state and cities. The money is needed for the hard work of reversing an epidemic that killed more than 4,000 Ohioans in 2016.
More and more evidence continues to be uncovered showing that drug makers likely knew of the addictive power of opioids, yet continued to pump the drugs into small communities. A recent Washington Post and 60 Minutes investigation found that millions of opioid doses were being sent to West Virginia towns.
Ms. Hicks-Hudson announced that the city is suing 24 opioid manufacturers and distributors “to recover our costs and to change the ways in which they prescribe and advertise these drugs.”
Toledo has spent more than $400,000 for rescuers to respond to opioid-related calls this year.
There is not only a human toll related to this epidemic. There are serious economic costs being borne by communities.
Mr. DeWine said he is giving the drug industry 30 days to come to the table with a serious offer to settle a state lawsuit filed in May. He considers a serious offer to be in the millions, if not billions, of dollars. His warning was squarely aimed at manufacturers Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions, Teva, Johnson & Johnson, and Allergan. Distributors McKesson, Amerisource Bergen, and Ohio’s Cardinal Health were also singled out by Mr. DeWine.
Money from the settlement would be used to implement Mr. DeWine’s 12-point plan. Highlights include:
● Creating a cabinet-level drug czar position to oversee the state’s efforts in combating the crisis.
● Doubling the number of substance abuse treatment facilities.
● Expanding drug task forces targeting drugs coming from Mexico.
● Establishing at least 60 more drug courts, which work with low-risk addicts on rehabilitation rather than sentencing them to jail.
● Developing a program that provides business owners incentives and reduces their risk in hiring employees in recovery.
Mr. DeWine deserves great credit. These are serious, substantive proposals that can reshape the battlefield against an epidemic that continues to kill 14 Ohioans per day. But the whole package is going to take serious funding. At least part of the money should come from the drug industry.
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Nov 2, 2017 | WCVB (ABC)
By Boston, MA
Video Link:
Rough Transcript: today, the mayor is announcing plans to pursue civil litigation against big pharma. >> they flooded the marketplace with these painkillers, so these kids are addicted through prescriptions, through medications. it was way too easy to get it, so they bear some responsibility here. we are going to fight to hold them responsible and to change their habits and to get some resources back to help our community. >> pharmaceutical research and manufacturers of america an industry group declined comment on this specific lawsuit, but states that, phrma is strongly committed to working with health care stakeholders, policymakers , and others to help address the current opioid crisis. now, as quincy does its due diligence before filing the suit, there are some signs that all of the efforts aimed at...the city of quincy will be the first community in massachusetts to sue the pharmaceutical industry for its alleged role in the opioid crisis. maria: newscenter 5's todd kazakiewich is live in quincy with information on this todd? ,>> we talked to the mayor this afternoon here at city hall. he says the point of this lawsuit is not only to hold the drug makers responsible for the past, but also to change how they do business long after this crisis is over. >> we're losing hundreds of kids. we're losing a generation to this scourge. >> quincy has done a lot to fight the opioidepidemic, from issuing narcan to first responders and making 700 saves in seven years, to tripling the 5:38 PMsize of the drug control unit, to investing in prevention education, but the crisis continues to ravage the... prevention and treatment are paying off. in all of 2016, quincy had 311 overdoses, causing 42 deaths. year-to-date for 2017, there have been 277 overdoes, resulting in 27 deaths. fewer overdoes leading to fewer deaths. those figures prove that opioid addiction is still a crisis here, as is the case across the state. the mayor knows that litigation is a long process with no guarantees, just like the effort to fight addiction.
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Nov 2, 2017 | WFXT (Fox)
By Boston, MA
Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/30444168?token=d34e9816-3826-4c6a-869e-0151d4ba4832
Rough Transcript:quincy this morning. michael, the city will be the first in the state to file this kind of lawsuit. >> well, quincy has been hit hard by the opioid crisis. much like many other cities and towns here in new england, but quincy is saying it is the first big city in massachusetts that they can taking it a step further and sue big pharma. made the announcement this week. he says he has hired the same law firm that took on big tobacco and asbestos claims. said big pharma marketed opioi opioid-based prescription in a way that downplayed the dangers of addiction saying, quote, we need to be able to find this crisis on every front and holding the drug industry accountable for deceptive and dangerous practices is an important one. the mayor says he wants this lawsuit to get big pharma to change
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