Opioid Litigation Daily Media Report -3/6/18

MDL

1. Can This Judge Solve the Opioid Crisis?

   Mar 5, 2018 | The New York Times

   By Jan Hoffman
   
   
   Here are a few choice mutterings from the scrum of lawyers outside Courtroom 18B, about the federal judge who summoned them to a closed-door conference on hundreds of opioid lawsuits:
2. Justice Department agrees to release painkiller data to aid opioid litigation settlement talks

   Mar 5, 2018 | Cleveland.com (OH)

   By Eric Heisig
   
   
   The Justice Department on Monday agreed to release some data the government collects on prescription painkiller sales in order to aid settlement talks between drug companies and the local governments suing them over the nation's opioid epidemic.
3. DEA Agrees To Large Data Release In Opioid MDL

   Mar 6, 2018 | Law360

   By Jeff Overley & Emily Field
   
   
   The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Monday told an Ohio federal judge presiding over multidistrict litigation that it will divulge nine years of data on opioid sales, backing off its resistance to such a large data release.
4. Plaintiff Lawyers See Nationwide Settlement As Only End For Opioid Lawsuits

   Mar 6, 2018 | Forbes

   By Daniel Fisher
   
   
   Lawyers meeting in a federal courtroom in Cleveland today to discuss a settlement of opioid litigation face the difficult task of crafting a deal that will not only pay their clients -- mostly towns and cities -- but include states and even the federal government while spreading the cash evenly across the country.
5. Trump and Trial Lawyers Target Drug Companies Over Opioid Addiction

   Mar 6, 2018 | Reason

   By Ira Stoll
   
   
   The opioid addiction issue is headed for the next stop on what is now a well-worn path: from public health crisis, to subject for award-winning and heart-tugging journalism, to payday for trial lawyers.

Commentary and FYIs

6. DOJ Fought DEA Data Request Before Announcing Opioid Task Force

   Mar 6, 2018 | The National Law Journal

   By Amanda Bronstad
   
   
   Before U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last week that the federal government might bring legal actions against opioid companies, Department of Justice lawyers were in court fighting over a drug distribution database that could aid ongoing settlement talks.
7. Opioid Overdose Among Children Nearly Doubles, DOJ Creates Task Force

   Mar 6, 2018 | Tech Times

   By Maui Hermitanio
   
   
   The opioid epidemic is negatively impacting children, and the rate of hospitalization, as well as admission for pediatric opioid poisoning, is increasing. Painkillers are the most common types of opioids.
8. Opioid Maker Insys Still Has Fans on Wall Street

   Mar 6, 2018 | Wall Street Journal

   By Allison Prang
   
   
   Insys Therapeutics INSY -1.99% has lost its former CEO and co-founder, John Kapoor, and several top executives, all charged with conspiracy to illegally distribute an addictive prescription painkiller.
9. The Blind Giants of the Opioid Crisis (Opinion)

   Mar 5, 2018 | US World News & Report

   By Lloyd Sederer
   
   
   IN MALCOLM GLADWELL'S nonfiction book, "David and Goliath," he guides us to think beyond the courage of David. While surely that was at work, he had something else working for him: Giants have poor vision; they can be nearly blind.
10. Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill says drug giant is

    Mar 6, 2018 | USA Today

    By Deirdre Shesgreen
    
    
    The world’s largest generic drug-maker, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, has refused to fully cooperate with a Senate investigation into whether major opioid manufacturers contributed to the deadly drug epidemic, according to Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who is leading the Senate probe.
11. Opioid Legislation Takes Center Stage in House, Senate

    Mar 5, 2018 | Bloomberg Law

    By Bronwyn Mixter
    
    
    Opioid legislation will take center stage again as a House panel will consider additional bills that include giving doctors more information about the addiction history of their patients.
12. FDA chief wants more mail inspectors to stem opioid influx

    Mar 5, 2018 | ABC News

    By Matthew Perrone
    
    
    The head of the Food and Drug Administration wants to more than double the number of packages his agency inspects for illicit drugs, an effort to stem a deadly flow of opioids that increasingly runs through the international mail supply.
13. The Staggering Scope Of America's Opioid Crisis (Opinion)

    Mar 5, 2018 | Forbes

    By John Hart
    
    
    Last September former Fox News host Eric Bolling was riding in the car with his wife after dinner. A call went to voicemail. It was a frantic message from one of his son’s friends. Bolling returned the call and simply asked, “Is he alive?” He wasn’t. The Bolling’s only son, Eric Chase, was gone from an accidental overdose. He took a Xanax laced with fentanyl, a deadly opioid, and never woke up.

Southeast (NC, GA, WV, TN, FL, LA)

14. City Council votes for bidding process for opioid legal contracts

    Mar 6, 2018 | Fayetteville Observer (NC)

    By Monica Vendituoli
    
    
    Fayetteville City Council voted 7-2 in favor of having the city attorney put out a request for information to bid for legal services regarding a civil action against prescription opioid manufacturers and wholesale distributors.
15. Winston-Salem joins lawsuit against opioid manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | Winston-Salem Journal (NC)

    By Wesley Young
    
    
    Winston-Salem is joining a growing list of local governments filing suit against opioid manufacturers and distributors, with no cost to the city for joining in the effort.
16. Hall County planning to sue opioid manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | Forsyth County News (GA)

    By Nick Bowman
    
    
    Citing local damage caused by the opioid epidemic, Hall County is hiring an Athens law firm to sue prescription drug manufacturers and others involved in opioid production and distribution.
17. Irwin Co. commissioners vote to join opioid class-action lawsuit

    Mar 6, 2018 | WALB (GA)

    By Jim Wallace
    
    
    On Monday night, the Irwin County Commission voted unanimously to join a large class-action lawsuit against pharmaceutical manufacturers of painkillers.
18. Wood County Commission chooses firm for opioids lawsuit

    Mar 6, 2018 | Parkersburg News & Sentinel (WV)

    By Brett Dunlap
    
    
    The Wood County Commission is going with a Clarksburg law firm with ties to a firm with officies nationally to be part of a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
19. WV Lawfirm Files Class Action Suit Against Purdue Pharma, Others, on Behalf of NAS Babies

    Mar 6, 2018 | West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WV)

    By Kara Leigh Lofton
    
    
    A Charleston-based law firm has filed a class action suit against 21 medical companies, including the opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma to sue for damages incurred by prenatal exposure to opioids.
20. County files lawsuit against opioid manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | Murfeesboro Post (TN)

    By Staff
    
    
    Rutherford County has filed a lawsuit against prescription opioid manufacturers and distributors to recover taxpayer money spent to combat the opioid epidemic, according to Mark Chalos, Managing Partner of the Nashville office of the national plaintiffs’ law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP.
21. City of Jacksonville sues 'big pharma' for opioid deaths, costs

    Mar 5, 2018 | News4JAX (FL)

    By Jenese Harris
    
    
    The city of Jacksonville is suing some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the United States, claiming that manufacturers, distributors and executives are all responsible for the city's deadly opioid epidemic.
22. Pharmaceutical industry sued over infant opioid addiction

    Mar 5, 2018 | The Louisiana Weekly (LA)

    By Ryan Whirty
    
    
    Citing “false representations and concealments… made with the intent to deceive Louisiana consumers,” petitioners filed this month a class-action lawsuit against the pharmaceutical industry calling for the protection, treatment and compensation of children born addicted to opioids and suffering from an array of resulting disorders.

Midwest (MO, OH, IL, IN)

23. Joplin Council Votes for Lawsuit Against Opioid Manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | KODE (MO)

    By Staff
    
    
    Joplin city leaders vote to enter a class action lawsuit against major opioid manufacturers.
24. Joplin council votes for JPD budget and lawsuit against opioid manufacturers

    Mar 5, 2018 | Fourstates Homepage (MO)

    By Austin Hyslip
    
    
    Joplin city leaders vote to enter a class action lawsuit against major opioid manufacturers.
25. Joplin To Join Class Action Lawsuit Against Opioid Manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | KZRG (MO)

    By Jon Lancello
    
    
    Monday night (3/5), the Joplin City Council voted to join a class action lawsuit against opioid manufacturers. Joplin City Attorney Peter Edwards tells News Talk KZRG the City won’t put up any money to take part in the lawsuit.
26. City of Joplin Joins Lawsuit Against Opioid Manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | KOAM (MO)

    By Chris Warner
    
    
    The City of Joplin is joining a number of other communities across the country in a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers.
27. Williams County Joins the Fight Against the Opioid Distributors

    Mar 6, 2018 | WNWO (OH)

    By Keith Conner
    
    
    Williams County Prosecuting Attorney and the Williams County Board of Commissioners announces Monday Williams County, Ohio is taking a much-needed step to hold accountable the companies responsible for dumping millions of dollars’ worth of prescription opiates into its community.
28. Family of opioid-addicted baby sues pharmaceutical companies

    Mar 6, 2018 | Associated Press

    By Staff
    
    
    An Illinois family of a baby born addicted to opioids is suing 20 pharmaceutical companies alleging they’re responsible for the mother’s addition to opioids and heroin.
29. Peru To Explore Opioid Lawsuit

    Mar 5, 2018 | Peru Indiana Today (IN)

    By Clint Jones & Rob Fields
    
    
    During the Board of Works meeting last Thursday, City Attorney Dustin Kern reported to the Board about the possibility of Peru joining a class action lawsuit against opiate manufacturers and distributors.

Northeast (NY)

30. Amherst hires outside counsel in opioid lawsuit

    Mar 6, 2018 | The Buffalo News (NY)

    By Joseph Popiolkowski
    
    
    A New York City-based law firm has been retained to represent the Town of Amherst in its lawsuit against major manufacturers and distributors of opioid pain medication.
31. Town of Amherst Joins Counties in Opioid Lawsuit

    Mar 5, 2018 | WGRZ (NY)

    By Ron Plants
    
    
    Amherst officials feel they need to go after pharmaceutical firms, just as local counties have done, in order to actually recover costs for town police and other services to help cope with the opioid epidemic.
32. Town of Amherst to file lawsuit against opioid pharmaceutical companies

    Mar 6, 2018 | WIVB (NY)

    By Rachele Mongiovi
    
    
    The Town of Amherst is suing drug companies as part of the fight against the overdose epidemic.
33. Amherst joins NYS lawsuit against opioids manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | WBFO (NY)

    By Mike Desmond
    
    
    Amherst is joining local governments that are suing opioid manufacturers. The lawsuit argues the legal drugs are not only costing governments money, but lives.

Southwest (OK)

34. Commissioners considering joining opioid litigation

    Mar 6, 2018 | The Clairemore Daily Progress (OK)

    By Cydney Baron
    
    
    Whether or not to join in litigation involving opioid manufacturers will continue to be a subject of conversation with the county commissioners for another week.

Broadcast Media Coverage

35. Fox 2 News at 6:00pm

    Mar 5, 2018 | St. Louis, MO

    By KTVI (Fox)
    
    
    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346021?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811
36. 7 Action News This Morning on TV20 Detroit

    Mar 6, 2018 | Detroit, MI

    By WMYD (MNT)
    
    
    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346028?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811
37. FOX8 News at 6:00A

    Mar 6, 2018 | Greensboro, NC

    By WGHP (Fox)
    
    
    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346036?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811
38. 24 Hour News 8's Daybreak at 5:30am

    Mar 6, 2018 | Indianapolis, IN

    By WISH (CW)
    
    
    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346045?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811
39. News4JAX News at 5am

    Mar 6, 2018 | Jacksonville, FL

    By WJXT (WJXT)
    
    
    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346054?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811
40. Spectrum News

    Mar 6, 2018 | Buffalo, NY

    By SPNB (Spectrum News)
    
    
    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346106?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811
41. ABC 27 News at Sunrise 6:30am

    Mar 6, 2018 | Tallahassee, FL

    By WTXL (ABC)
    
    
    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346110?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811

MDL

1. Can This Judge Solve the Opioid Crisis?

   Mar 5, 2018 | The New York Times

   By Jan Hoffman

   Here are a few choice mutterings from the scrum of lawyers outside Courtroom 18B, about the federal judge who summoned them to a closed-door conference on hundreds of opioid lawsuits:

   “Grandstander.”

   “Pollyanna.”

   “Over his head.”

   And the chorus: “This is not how we do things!”

   Judge Dan Aaron Polster of the Northern District of Ohio has perhaps the most daunting legal challenge in the country: resolving more than 400 federal lawsuits brought by cities, counties and Native American tribes against central figures in the national opioid tragedy, including makers of the prescription painkillers, companies that distribute them, and pharmacy chains that sell them. And he has made it clear that he will not be doing business as usual.

   During the first hearing in the case, in early January, the judge informed lawyers that he intended to dispense with legal norms like discovery and would not preside over years of “unraveling complicated conspiracy theories.” Then he ordered them to prepare for settlement discussions immediately.

   Not a settlement that would be “just moving money around,” he added, but one that would provide meaningful solutions to a national crisis — by the end of this year.

   “I did a little math,” he said, alluding to the rising number of overdoses. “About 150 Americans are going to die today, just today, while we’re meeting.”Continue reading the main storyRELATED COVERAGEWith Overdoses on Rise, Cities and Counties Look for Someone to BlameDEC. 20, 2017In Opioid Battle, Cherokee Want Their Day in Tribal Court DEC. 17, 2017Opinion EditorialThe Insanity of Taxpayer-Funded AddictionNOV. 10, 2017FAIR GAMEHard Questions for a Company at the Center of the Opioid Crisis JULY 21, 2017

   The transcript from that hearing has created a ruckus in legal circles. Adam S. Zimmerman, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, has begun teaching it in his classes.

   “We say we want judges to be umpires,” Mr. Zimmerman said. “But when there’s a large social problem at stake, judges can be umpires for only so long, before they decide it has to be solved.”

   Lawyers on both sides would not speak on the record, noting that to criticize the judge presiding over their case would be professional suicide. But in private conversations, many were scathing, questioning his grasp of the issues and predicting that a stepped-up timetable was bound to collapse.

   Can Judge Polster pull this off?

   “These are bold things for a judge to say and it’s exciting and intriguing to follow,” said Abbe R. Gluck, a professor at Yale Law School who directs the Solomon Center for Health Policy and Law. “But to say that his goals are ambitious would be an enormous understatement.”Legal Finger-Pointing

   In December, a judicial panel gathered all the prescription opioid cases filed in federal court across the country and plopped them into Judge Polster’s lap. The consolidation of large numbers of similar cases is called a multidistrict litigation, or MDL; it’s usually done to enhance efficiency and reduce costs.

   The panel cited several reasons for selecting Judge Polster. Ohio has been hard-hit by the crisis and is also centrally located to the defendants. And Judge Polster has MDL experience. He mediated settlements in some 700 cases involving a medical contrast dye.

   This type of litigation is inherently unconventional, but the consolidated opioid lawsuits may be even more complex than most.

   Rather than just one kind of industry defendant, this litigation has several, each playing a different role — not only drug makers but also distributors and retailers. That makes the apportionment of liability even more contentious, with defendants blaming one another.

   All the defendants say the drugs were approved by the Food and Drug Administration and prescribed by doctors.

   Plaintiffs claim that manufacturers, like Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson, aggressively marketed the pills for years, despite knowing about addictive properties; that distributors, like McKesson and Cardinal Health, shipped alarming quantities without reporting to the authorities; that pharmacy chains, like Walgreens and CVS Health, looked away while selling flag-raising amounts to individuals.

   Adding weight to the plaintiffs’ case, the Justice Department filed a so-called statement of interest in the litigation last week, to emphasize the government’s “substantial costs and significant interest in addressing the opioid epidemic.”

   The theories under which parties are suing make for a legal cacophony: public nuisance laws; fraud, racketeering and corruption; violations of federal and state laws on controlled substances. With the judge pushing for settlement, legal experts worry that these arguments may not get full consideration.

   “Courts are hard-wired for litigation,” through which facts can come to light, said Elizabeth C. Burch, a law professor at the University of Georgia who writes about multidistrict litigation. “Here, there’s a short-circuiting of that process. So how do you know if it’s the right settlement if you don’t have all the information in front of you?”

   Judge Polster has reminded both sides that if they resist settling swiftly in favor of litigation, they could be setting themselves on a path toward unpredictable jury trials.

   The night before the conference, many lawyers, expert witnesses and clients stayed in the same hotel. They gathered in rooms and the restaurant lounge, strategizing, trying to second-guess the judge. On occasion, their voices could be overheard, rising in exasperation.

   Earlier that day, Judge Polster, 66, ate a hasty lunch of a hard-boiled egg and tangerine unpacked from sandwich baggies, having just returned to his chambers from tutoring reading to a third-grader at a school near the courthouse. He glanced at his wristwatch, its fraying band wrapped in duct tape.

   Before his day was over, the judge, shadowed by a reporter, would oversee a half-dozen legal matters, help teach a class on mediation at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, dine with the opioid litigation’s special masters — court-appointed intermediaries who expedite negotiations — and then lug home a nearly foot-thick binder of materials to study.

   Judge Polster, who is married to an arbitration lawyer, grew up in a middle-class Cleveland neighborhood that his parents fought to integrate. Their activism taught him “ordinary people can do extraordinary things if they don’t take a pass.” His Jewish faith has also shaped his outlook on justice and compassion, he said; he teaches a confirmation class about ethical decision-making.

   After graduating from Harvard Law School, he began a lifelong career in public service, working for the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division in Cleveland and then the United States attorney’s office there, prosecuting economic crimes. In 1998, President Bill Clinton appointed him to the federal bench.The Most Human Thing

   Like so many Ohioans, Judge Polster has been personally touched by the opioids crisis. A friend’s daughter died from an overdose.

   “The stakes, in this case, are incredibly high,” he said. “Any thinking person should feel terrible about the situation we’re in.”

   He was keenly aware that steering the process away from traditional litigation is unorthodox. “The judicial branch typically doesn’t fix social problems, which is why I’m somewhat uncomfortable doing this,” he said. “But it seems the most human thing to do.”

   Upon hearing of the disparaging comments from some lawyers, Judge Polster stared into deep space to retrieve his words before making eye contact, a habit that some find unnerving.

   They called him arrogant? Unrealistically ambitious?

   “I think that’s a fair assessment,” he said. “But I won’t fault myself for attempting this.”

   He would not address specific issues in the opioid litigation. But he opened a window into his thinking, generally, about why he prefers rapid settlement rather than trying cases. He believes that when parties have gotten this far down the road in a lawsuit, they already have at least 80 percent of the information they need to negotiate; the longer litigation continues, he said he has found, the more entrenched each side can become.

   Later that day, he told law students: “It’s almost never productive to get the other side angry. They lash out and hurt you and themselves. I try to get the sides to think it through as a problem to solve, not a fight to be won or lost.”

   The following morning, a mash-up of small-town mayors, big-city lawyers, addiction doctors, pharmacy industry executives and a police chief trooped into Judge Polster’s mahogany-lined federal courtroom, a crowd of nearly 170. Lawyers hoisted folding chairs for overflow seating.

   Confusion was ubiquitous. Even the most optimistic admitted to low expectations, predicting that the day would amount to sword-rattling and throat-clearing.

   The judge had ordered a closed-door session that morning with tiers of lead lawyers, their experts and clients, to educate him on the issues. Immediately after, he would begin settlement discussions.

   To that end, he had also invited representatives from two groups of state attorneys general, neither in his official purview. One group of about 10, which included Mike DeWine from Ohio, had already filed lawsuits in their home state courts. Another group of 41 attorneys general, who are cooperating in their own prescription opioid investigation, have not yet filed.

   But though the attorneys general are not parties in this litigation, legal experts say their input is essential to its success: The defendants will most likely insist on a settlement that would resolve most, if not all, the state lawsuits as well as the federal ones.

   After the morning session, Judge Polster summoned the attorneys general into the courthouse auditorium to air grievances. Other lawyers repaired to the cafeteria, waiting their turn.

   Tides of earlier skepticism about Judge Polster began receding.

   Some noted that he seemed pretty smart and asked some good results-driven questions.

   “Classic Polster,” said Pete Weinberger, a Cleveland plaintiffs’ lawyer who has appeared before the judge in other cases, saying he seemed to listen intently and probe with pragmatism. “His questioning focused on reducing the number of pills in the chain of distribution.”

   Plaintiffs’ lawyers and addiction specialists began floating trial balloon solutions, all the more remarkable given that, as one lawyer said, “we’re just at the beginning of the beginning.” Take the strongest doses off the market? Fund addiction treatment and public education?

   The judge had also insisted that front-line victims, not just the lawyers, bear witness that day: A Camden County, N.J., police chief whose force was worn down by the opioid-related crimes. Steve Williams, the mayor of Huntington, W.Va., which was featured in an Oscar-nominated short documentary, “Heroin(e),” as the epicenter of the epidemic. One recent week, Huntington, with a population of 48,000, recorded 29 overdoses.

   “I’m fighting drug dealers in white coats,” Mr. Williams said. “We need the resources to clean up this mess and make sure it never happens again.”

   The day ended with Judge Polster issuing brisk orders for the next steps.

   Leaving the courthouse, Mark S. Cheffo, who represents Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, tersely characterized the mood as “cautiously optimistic.”

   Just 10 days later, Purdue announced it would no longer market OxyContinto prescribers. “This is a stunning about-face by Purdue, which has long contended that it has not influenced physician education with its drug reps,” said Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford addiction specialist who spoke at the Cleveland session. “I think the overwhelming pressure from Judge Polster, not to mention the court of public opinion, led to this radical reversal.”

   Purdue issued a statement last week saying the company was “fully engaged in the process that Judge Polster has set in action to explore meaningful solutions” to the opioid crisis.

   On Tuesday, delegations of all-star litigators and representatives of the attorneys general are to return to Courtroom 18B to begin negotiating “economic and noneconomic issues.”

   With countless lives and billions of dollars at stake and both sides arguing their cases in the news media, the obstacles to resolution seem staggering.

   Yet on numerous occasions, Allen L. Bohnert, a former law clerk, has watched Judge Polster take on the intractable.

   “At the end of a long day where it looked like there wouldn’t be a settlement, he’d walk out with one,” said Mr. Bohnert, now an assistant federal public defender. “And he’d wink and say, ‘Sometimes it takes a federal judge.’”

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2. Justice Department agrees to release painkiller data to aid opioid litigation settlement talks

   Mar 5, 2018 | Cleveland.com (OH)

   By Eric Heisig

   The Justice Department on Monday agreed to release some data the government collects on prescription painkiller sales in order to aid settlement talks between drug companies and the local governments suing them over the nation's opioid epidemic.

   The data, which comes from the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System, or ARCOS, is collected by the Drug Enforcement Administration. While attorneys for local governments sought the release of information from the database that stretches back for more than a decade, the government opposed this, citing ongoing criminal investigations and confidentiality issues.

    The data the Justice Department agreed to release includes a list of drug companies that manufacture and distribute 95 percent of the opioids in each state, broken down by state, for each year between 2006 and 2014. It also shows total number of pills sold in every state each year and how much market share each drug company enjoys.

    David Sierleja, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Cleveland, wrote in a letter Monday that the data will only be released if the judge issues a protective order requiring the data not be publicly disseminated and be returned or destroyed when the litigation ends.

    The Justice Department will also require that the data not be used for commercial permission and that certain information only be seen by attorneys, Sierleja wrote.

    "Indeed, I believe that providing the information is consistent with the DOJ's own efforts to combat the devastating opioid crisis that is ravaging families and communities across America," Sierleja wrote to Paul Farrell Jr., one of the lead attorneys for the local governments.

    While attorneys for the local governments sought the release of more data, U.S. District Judge Dan Polster sought a compromise during a hearing last week and suggested the Justice Department release what it agreed to on Monday.

    The judge and attorneys for the governments said the data will be used as talks continue to settle the hundreds of lawsuits filed by cities and counties against drug companies nationwide. Polster and attorneys for the government said the data could be used to show how many pills went to certain parts of the country and to identify additional companies that flooded the nation with painkillers but had not yet been sued.

    Polster is set to hold another round of settlement talks on Tuesday in federal court in Cleveland.

    The lawsuits say the drug manufacturers overstated the benefits and downplayed the risks of addiction when treating pain with opioids, and that distributors failed to properly monitor suspicious orders of prescription painkillers.

    The Justice Department is considering whether to intervene in the litigation Polster is hearing. It asked the judge last week for more time to make a decision.

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3. DEA Agrees To Large Data Release In Opioid MDL

   Mar 6, 2018 | Law360

   By Jeff Overley & Emily Field

   The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Monday told an Ohio federal judge presiding over multidistrict litigation that it will divulge nine years of data on opioid sales, backing off its resistance to such a large data release.

   In a status report, the DEA told U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster that it will provide the identities of manufacturers and distributors that sold 95 percent of opioids in every state from 2006 through 2014. Previously, the DEA had only agreed to release data on manufacturers for 2012 and 2013.
   
   The information will include a state-by-state breakdown and will show the “aggregate amount of pills sold and the market shares of each manufacturer and distributor,” according to the status report. Judge Polster had ordered the DEA to file the report by Monday.
   
   The information is being sought by lawyers for local governments that have filed hundreds of lawsuits against manufacturers and distributors for allegedly fueling the opioid crisis through reckless sales of various painkillers. The information comes from a federal database called ARCOS that receives roughly 80 million reports annually from drug companies about transactions involving controlled substances.
   
   The DEA previously voiced numerous objections to a broad disclosure of records. Among other things, it argued that a broad disclosure could compromise trade secrets, be administratively challenging and help criminals identify areas with large amounts of opioids.
   
   Lawyers for the local governments could not immediately be reached for comment Monday on whether the DEA’s proposed disclosure fully satisfies their requests. The disclosure is expected to help the lawyers with identifying defendants and allocating damages.
   
   On a related note, the parties have been at odds over the terms of a protective order that would limit access to the disclosed data. On Friday, the DEA told Judge Polster that the local governments, the drug companies and the DEA had been “unable to reach an agreement on the protective order.”
   
   According to the DEA, there were "two primary sticking points." One was the desire of the DEA and drug companies to apply an "attorneys' eyes only" designation to sensitive records. The other was the desire of plaintiffs lawyers to “share all of the ARCOS data with their clients and with state and local law enforcement agencies,” the DEA said.
   
   Motley Rice LLC co-founder Joe Rice, a lead attorney for the local governments, told Law360 that Judge Polster may hold a hearing on Tuesday to resolve the dispute over the protective order.
   
   “Most probably he’s going to decide what the scope is and is going to direct us to do X, Y and Z,” Rice said.
   
   The case is In re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation, case number 1:17-md-02804, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
   

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4. Plaintiff Lawyers See Nationwide Settlement As Only End For Opioid Lawsuits

   Mar 6, 2018 | Forbes

   By Daniel Fisher

   Lawyers meeting in a federal courtroom in Cleveland today to discuss a settlement of opioid litigation face the difficult task of crafting a deal that will not only pay their clients -- mostly towns and cities -- but include states and even the federal government while spreading the cash evenly across the country.

   That reality was expressed repeatedly at a conference last week in San Francisco, where plaintiff lawyers discussed the strategies they are pursuing against opioid manufacturers and distributors as well as the complexity of the unprecedented litigation wave they have launched. Most of the attendees were private lawyers who have signed contingency-fee contracts with municipal clients, under which they stand to collect a percentage of whatever their clients earn from the litigation.

   “Obviously there’s no resolution here unless it’s for the entire country,” said Jayne Conroy, a partner with Simmons Conroy, one of the plaintiff law firms leading the multi-district litigation. “You can’t have rehab programs in some areas and not others.”

   With plaintiffs ranging from small towns to cities as large as New York and Chicago, plus hospitals and union healthcare plans, the MDL consolidated in a federal court in Ohio represents a multibillion-dollar threat to the opioid industry.

   But plaintiff lawyers have their own challenges: A number of states have filed lawsuits in state court, potentially competing for the same dollars as the clients of private attorneys. And last week the federal government announced its interest in the litigation, saying it may intervene to recover billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid expenditures associated with opiate addiction.

   Lawyers for both sides are scheduled to meet today for a new round of settlement talks in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster in Cleveland. But the sheer complexity of the litigation raises questions about how the parties will craft an agreement that ends the threat of further lawsuits against the industry while distributing cash to all the varied entities who have sued.

   Some lawyers participating HarrisMartin’s Opioid Litigation Conference in San Francisco on Friday admitted it will be politically difficult to negotiate terms that reward towns and counties that sued and leave others with nothing. Attendees spoke of using the litigation proceeds fund addiction-treatment programs as well as helping governments recoup a huge variety of opiate-related costs, from unreimbursed hospital care to special high schools for the children of addicts.

   California State Sen. Joe Dunn, himself a former mass-tort plaintiff lawyer, said the litigation will be inherently political, as government officials view their lawsuits as a way to supplement strained budgets and provide addiction treatment to patients who are often the children of white, middle-class constituents.

   “Middle-class families will lead them to focus to abatement,” he said, with demands for local treatment centers and related services like educational assistance for the children of addicts. The opioid crisis is “something different happening in this country, regardless of who you represent.”

   Judge Polster made it clear at a January hearing that he wants the parties to hammer out a global settlement which would, in his words, “do something meaningful to abate this crisis and do it in 2018.” To do that, however, plaintiff lawyers have to offer the defendant companies what they need: Closure. And that will be difficult given the parallel litigation in state courts, some of it pursued by state attorneys general who don’t share the same financial incentives as plaintiff lawyers representing towns and cities under contingency-fee contracts.

   Private lawyers are funding the litigation themselves, and they have an incentive to reach a settlement that includes enough money for them to recoup their costs and make a profit. The states may be more interested in injunctive relief, such as reforms in the way drugs are distributed and more robust systems for preventing diversion. Millions of addicts started their habits with pills they obtained from someone else with a prescription, or in street purchases.

   Lawyers at the HarrisMartin conference laid out the legal theories that they plan to deploy against opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers as well as providing advice on how to obtain detailed damages estimates from plaintiff entities. The legal strategies fall into roughly three categories:

   Nuisance

   While the law in this area is still unsettled, plaintiff lawyers won a landmark victory in California this year when the state Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a $600 million judgment several cities obtained against paint and pigment manufacturers for removal of lead paint. The theory, which has been upheld by several other courts, is that paint manufacturers created a “public nuisance” by selling lead paint despite the knowledge lead is poisonous.

   The cities overcame arguments the paint was legal when it was sold – in fact, it was specified for use in many government buildings – and lead’s toxicity was common knowledge by citing advertising touting the paint as safe. Opioid plaintiffs make a similar argument that manufacturers and distributors created a public nuisance by lulling prescribing physicians into believing drugs like OxyContin were safe and non-addictive. Defendant companies will argue opioids were distributed through tightly regulated channels and prescribed by physicians.

   Lawyers will try to use broad state consumer protection and antifraud statutes where they can, based on marketing materials that touted the supposedly abuse-resistant qualities of delayed-release pills like OxyContin and the use of highly paid “detailers” who allegedly misled prescribing physicians. Statutory penalties can run to thousands of dollars per violation under state law, yielding tens of billions of dollars in potential verdicts.

   Racketeering 

   Plaintiff lawyers are engaged in heated negotiations with the Trump administration over the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System, or ARCOS, which tracks every single opioid pill from production line to retail pharmacy. They hope to use this database to build cases under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Practices Act alleging distributors including McKesson, Cardinal Health and Amerisource Bergan knowingly shipped millions of pills to outlets where there was an unreasonable risk of diversion to addicts.

   “We think this is one of the best RICO cases we’ve ever seen,” said David McMullen, a partner with the Barrett Law Firm who is trying to form a nationwide class action of hospitals. With treble damages, RICO could be one of the most potent weapons in the plaintiffs’ arsenal.

   Lawyers also discussed how to assemble estimates of damages directly related to opioid abuse, a key element of any lawsuit. McMullen told attendees hospitals are ideal plaintiffs because their records include codes for every procedure that directly reference opioids and addiction.

   Other lawyers urged the audience to start pushing their government clients to compile all the costs that might be associated with opioid abuse, which reaches into practically every nook and cranny of local government. Sheriff’s departments, for example, have reported higher jail costs as they have incarcerated more addicts for everything from theft to driving while impaired (include the costs of blood tests for intoxication, lawyers were told).

   Local governments are also spending more on schools, foster care and other social services because of opioid addiction, and hospitals lose an estimated $35 billion a year on uncompensated care of addicts. One problem yet to be worked out is how state and local governments will document costs that are often shared between them to avoid double-counting, assuming any resolution of the litigation includes such detailed accounting.

   This detailed accounting will help plaintiffs get around another challenge in public nuisance lawsuits, which is proving the entity that is suing suffered specific damages that are different than the public at large. They can’t sue over generalized harms like drug addiction and increased harm, but they can potentially convince judges to continue lawsuits seeking to recover specific expenses associated with drug abuse and addiction.

   One study showed the median delivery of a healthy baby costs $3,500 and involves 2.5 days in the hospital, while the median baby born with neonatal abstinence syndrome due to drug use by its mother costs $66,000.

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5. Trump and Trial Lawyers Target Drug Companies Over Opioid Addiction

   Mar 6, 2018 | Reason

   By Ira Stoll

   The opioid addiction issue is headed for the next stop on what is now a well-worn path: from public health crisis, to subject for award-winning and heart-tugging journalism, to payday for trial lawyers.

   The lawyers are poised to do to prescription drug companies, pharmacy chains, and drug distributors what they did to tobacco companies and asbestos manufacturers—wring from them a multibillion dollar settlement, with a sizeable chunk going to the lawyers themselves.

   They may even do so with an assist from President Trump. "Hopefully we can do some litigation against the opioid companies," Trump said earlier this month at a White House "Opioids Summit." "I think it's very important because a lot of states are doing it, but I keep saying, if the states are doing it, why isn't the federal government doing it? So that will happen."

   Somehow the Democrats usually on high alert at the risk of President Trump "interfering" with the "independent" Justice Department apparently managed to make peace with the presidential involvement, so long as it involved Trump siding with the trial bar against the for-profit pharmaceutical industry.

   The Justice Department was acting as Trump was talking. On March 1, federal government lawyers filed a "statement of interest of the United States of America" before Judge Dan Polster of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Judge Polster is presiding over the consolidated cases known as In Re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation. It is so vast that just the docket listing the names of the parties and their lawyers is 222 pages long.

   The potential damages involved are vast. The federal lawyers, who asked the judge for 30 days to "evaluate" whether to participate in the lawsuits, cited a report by the president's Council of Economic Advisors, who "estimated that in 2015, the economic cost of the opioid crisis was $504 billion."

   It wasn't so long ago that Republican presidents stood for reining in civil litigation rather than piling on to it. But then again, it wasn't so long ago that Republican presidents stood for free international trade rather than tariffs, either.

   As usual in these sorts of cases, "liability" is likely to be more about having the deep pockets available to fund settlements than with any thoughtful or thorough reckoning with moral or logical responsibility. Don't expect much effort to target the congressmen and senators who voted for the ObamaCare legislation that expanded insurance coverage for these drugs, or for the Food and Drug Administration bureaucrats who approved them, or, with few exceptions, the doctors who prescribed them. Certainly don't blame any of the users themselves. The targets of the suits instead are mostly large publicly traded companies—Abbott Laboratories, CVS Health, Costco, Express Scripts, Wal-Mart—whose shareholders will wind up paying the price of any settlement.

   Also as usual, there is little consideration given to the potential unintended consequences. The same issue of The New York Times that carried the news of the government's statement of interest before Judge Polster also carried a book review lamenting the "sluggish progress" and "dry pipeline" in developing new medicine to treat mental illness.

   It's already so expensive to discover a new prescription medicine and to go through the clinical trials required to prove safety and efficacy that most big drug companies have more or less given up on early-stage research and development, preferring instead to purchase smaller, venture-funded start-ups whose products show promise. Adding the possible costs of litigation and settlement for potential abuse even after a product has been approved by the FDA makes the hurdle for investing in a new drug even higher.

   Trump is fond of invoking the "forgotten man." It's a category that might include people with diseases that go uncured because drug companies are spending on lawyers, settlements, or insurance premiums instead of research and development.

   That's not to say that the drug companies are entirely blameless. If evidence proves that their employees or executives intentionally engaged in fraudulent behavior in connection with opioid abuse, those individuals should be held accountable. But the idea of making public company shareholders foot the bill for a public health crisis is so flaky and potentially counterproductive that it's the sort of thing only a trial lawyer, or a politician, could have dreamed up.

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Commentary and FYIs

6. DOJ Fought DEA Data Request Before Announcing Opioid Task Force

   Mar 6, 2018 | The National Law Journal

   By Amanda Bronstad

   Before U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last week that the federal government might bring legal actions against opioid companies, Department of Justice lawyers were in court fighting over a drug distribution database that could aid ongoing settlement talks.

   On Feb. 27, Sessions announced a task force that would consider “all available criminal and civil law enforcement tools” to combat the opioid crisis and assist local and state governments in their suits against distributors and manufacturers. He later directed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to re-evaluate its regulations concerning the prescription painkillers.

   But in court, DOJ lawyers representing the DEA were pushing for a protective order that would shield a critical database from the public, law enforcement and the cities, counties and states that have sued opioid companies. DOJ lawyers have spent months challenging the scope of a request from plaintiffs lawyers to turn over the database. In fact, a day before Sessions announced the DOJ’s task force, First Assistant U.S. Attorney David Sierleja in Cleveland wrote a letter to a plaintiffs attorney in the opioid cases detailing a list of concerns about trade secrets, privacy rights, interference with law enforcement investigations and a potential outbreak of “large-scale robberies of controlled substances.”

   On Monday, DOJ lawyers agreed to provide some of the database as long as a judge approved a protective order that would keep the data confidential. Lawyers are due back in court on Tuesday.

   DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec declined to comment.

   Plaintiffs lawyers Paul Farrell of Huntington, West Virginia’s Greene, Ketchum, Farrell, Bailey & Tweel, and Peter Mougey of Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Rafferty & Proctor in Pensacola, Florida, who have filed court documents relating to the database, did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Joe Rice of Motley Rice, co-lead counsel in the litigation.

   Despite President Donald Trump’s declaration in October that the opioid crisis was a public health emergency, the federal government has so far been absent from settlement talks that U.S. District Judge Dan Polster ordered in lawsuits brought by cities, counties and states.

   That doesn’t mean the DOJ hasn’t been in court. On Oct. 30, U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus, who was overseeing more than a dozen opioid lawsuits in Ohio before the MDL, authorized plaintiffs lawyers in the city of Cincinnati’s case to issue a subpoena for the Automated Records and Consolidated Orders System, or ARCOS, database. The database, based on the reporting data of manufacturers and distributors, tracks 80 million transactions a year involving controlled substances.

   On Nov. 27, the DOJ objected to the subpoena.

   Before the dispute got resolved, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation sent the case and hundreds of other opioid lawsuits in federal court to Polster’s courtroom.

   In January, plaintiffs lawyers immediately pressed Polster for the database. Polster, a former federal prosecutor, agreed that the database could be important but also acknowledged the DOJ’s potential concerns, particularly given the data’s use in DEA investigations and criminal prosecutions.

   “There is a legitimate need for plaintiffs to obtain this data,” he wrote in his order last month, “but the court believes that production must be tailored—perhaps through a protective order.”

   Lawyers have spent the past month at odds over a proposed protective order, which Polster ordered both sides to come up with by Feb. 23.

   One day before the protective order was due, DOJ lawyers met in Washington, D.C., with five plaintiffs lawyers, including Farrell and Mougey, and lawyers for two distributors, according to court records. Among the government attorneys were Alex Haas, chief of staff of the DOJ’s civil division, and Mary Daly, who Sessions named the DOJ’s director of opioid enforcement and prevention efforts that same week.

   But no agreement was reached. In a status report, plaintiffs lawyers Farrell and Mougey said the DOJ’s proposal was “problematic because the limited data would not allow the MDL plaintiffs or the court to identify the specific manufacturers and distributors that sold and/or distributed the prescription opioids into specific communities.” It also failed to provide the amount of opioids distributed in a particular state, county or city. The DOJ also insisted that plaintiffs lawyers not share the data with their clients, state attorneys general or the media, and raised concerns that identifying market share would risk competitive harm to opioid companies.

   In their own status report, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Bennett and Sierleja, both in Cleveland, said the DOJ would provide a list of transactions identified by a “unique numerical identifier,” rather than a company’s name.

   After a Feb. 26 hearing, Polster ordered both sides to try again on an agreement over the database.

   On Friday, government lawyers filed a motion for a protective order, which, if granted, would allow them to provide the data on a confidential basis. The DOJ agreed to provide a list of manufacturers and distributors with 95 percent market share, and transactions from 2006 through 2014, according to a status report filed Monday.

   Such “a limited authorization to provide additional information to assist the court and the parties in attempting to reach a settlement in this case is in the public interest,” Sierleja wrote in an attached letter to Farrell. “Indeed, I believe that providing the information is consistent with the DOJ’s own efforts to combat the devastating opioid crisis that is ravaging families and communities across America.”

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7. Opioid Overdose Among Children Nearly Doubles, DOJ Creates Task Force

   Mar 6, 2018 | Tech Times

   By Maui Hermitanio

   The opioid epidemic is negatively impacting children, and the rate of hospitalization, as well as admission for pediatric opioid poisoning, is increasing. Painkillers are the most common types of opioids.

   A retrospective pediatric study conducted by the Pediatric Health Information System indicates that more children are landing in hospitals due to opioid ingestion and overdose for the period of 2004 to 2015.

   Data incurred by the research shows that there were 3,647 opioid-related hospitalizations in 31 hospitals across the country. At least 42.9 percent of the hospitalized patients required admission to pediatric ICU while others were supported with mechanical ventilator and vasopressors.Opioids Use Among Kids

   Based on the study, the incidence of hospitalization for prescription-opioid poisoning among children and adolescents from 1 to 19 years of age increased nearly twofold from 1997 to 2012, with the largest percentage increase occurring among the youngest children ages 1 to 4.

   Young children accidentally ingest opioids due to curiosity while adolescents and teenagers are more likely to have intentional ingestions, either for recreational purposes or for self-harm.

   The researchers identified methadone ingestions, with nearly 20 percent of children below 6 years old being admitted with methadone ingestion.

   "When they come in, they're going to fall into one of two categories: either they're teenagers with intentional or drug-seeking behavior because of recreational or self-injurious behavior, or they're kids who got into their parents' medication," says Dr. Jason Kane, an associate professor of pediatrics and critical care at Comer Children's Hospital in Chicago and a lead author on the study.Opioid Addiction

   Prescription opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and morphine are powerful painkillers. Aside from reducing pain, these drugs may also trigger feelings of intense pleasure or being high. Prolonged use of opioids can lead to addiction, misuse, and abuse.

   Opioid use disorder affects an estimate of 2.4 million Americans. The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control describes OUD as a problematic pattern of opioid use that causes significant impairment or distress. Among the most commonly abused opioids include prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin, as well as illegal drugs like heroin.

   Rates of opioid overdose deaths increased significantly from 7 per 100,000 in 2013 to 9 per 100,000 in 2014. The CDC has characterized all opioid pain reliever deaths as prescription opioid overdoses.

   In 2016, an estimate of 64,000 Americans died due to a drug overdose, where a majority of the cases from opioid overdose. Nearly 166 people die each day due to opioids, prompting the United States Department of Health and Human Services to declare opioid addiction a public health emergency.Task Force To Go After Manufacturers

   Last Feb. 27, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of the Department of Justice Prescription Interdiction & Litigation Task Force, to fight the prescription opioid crisis.

   The PIL Task Force will aggressively deploy and coordinate all available criminal and civil law enforcement tools to reverse the tide of opioid overdoses in the United States, with a particular focus on opioid manufacturers and distributors.

   Sessions have directed the PIL Task Force to establish a working group to improve coordination and data sharing across the federal government to better identify violations of law and patterns of fraud related to the opioid epidemic; evaluate possible changes to the regulatory regime governing opioid distribution; and recommend changes to laws.

   "We will use criminal penalties. We will use civil penalties. We will use whatever tools we have to hold people accountable for breaking our laws," said Sessions.

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8. Opioid Maker Insys Still Has Fans on Wall Street

   Mar 6, 2018 | Wall Street Journal

   By Allison Prang

   Insys Therapeutics INSY -1.99% has lost its former CEO and co-founder, John Kapoor, and several top executives, all charged with conspiracy to illegally distribute an addictive prescription painkiller.

   The company has lost more than 80% of its market cap since its peak price in 2015 amid declining sales and multiple lawsuits from states over how it marketed Subsys, a mouth-spray version of the potent opioid painkiller fentanyl that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat cancer-related pain.

   But Insys hasn’t lost all of its following on Wall Street.

   Four of the six analysts who cover Insys still recommend buying the stock. Despite the threat of looming litigation, they note the possibilities in the company’s pipeline and the potential stabilization of Subsys sales, among other things.

   Some short sellers say analysts aren’t doing their homework. To critics, the company’s drug pipeline isn’t that attractive, and the company could end up owing more than what it’s set aside for litigation costs. As of March 2, 16.9% of shares outstanding were being sold short, according to data from S&P Capital IQ.

   “These people are complete imbeciles,” Marc Cohodes, a former Insys short seller, said of the analysts.

   Ken Trbovich, a managing director for Janney Montgomery Scott who rates Insys as a “buy,” said his rating is “entirely predicated” on the company’s drug pipeline. Insys is developing two different cannabinoid drugs that patients can take orally or inhale, along with different spray treatments, which aim to treat problems including children’s epilepsy and opioid dependence.

   “The shorts have been right on the stock,” Mr. Trbovich said. “I still think I’m right on the pipeline.”

   The other firms whose analysts have a buy rating on Insys—RBC Capital Markets, Jefferies and JMP Securities—didn’t respond to requests for comment.

   “What we believe sets Insys apart, and remains underappreciated, is the depth and diversity of our product pipeline,” Insys said in a statement. “Our new management team is firmly committed to fostering an organizational culture of high ethical standards.”

   A long-running investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts into allegations that Insys officials bribed doctors to prescribe large amounts of the drug led to the arrests of Dr. Kapoor and six former Insys executives and managers. Dr. Kapoor has pleaded not guilty.

   The office has also subpoenaed the company for documents tied to marketing and sales practices for Subsys, and is also looking into Insys’ patient-services hub.

   Several states have sued Insys for deceptive marketing of Subsys, and health insurer Anthem Inc. sued the company over money it paid to cover Subsys prescriptions. The Department of Health and Human Services, meanwhile, is looking into whether Insys violated its programs and has subpoenaed the company for documents, Insys said in a recent filing.

   Chief Executive Saeed Motahari, who joined the company last April, said on a November earnings call that the company continues to “work closely and cooperate with all legal authorities.”

   To pay for a possible settlement with the Justice Department, Insys set aside $150 million last year. It has acknowledged it might have to set aside more. Revenue for Insys peaked in 2015 at $330.3 million. For the first nine months of the 2017 fiscal year, net revenue was down 42% from the same period a year earlier, to $109.2 million. The company cited a drop in Subsys prescriptions.

   “It’s about as radioactive a product as you’re going to get in the pharmaceutical space,” said David Amsellem, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. Mr. Amsellem, who has a hold rating on the stock, said the company needed to move away from Subsys.

   Insys has said its goal is to file one new drug application every year through 2021. Of the five treatments in Insys’ pipeline, the furthest along is a buprenorphine painkiller spray for which the FDA accepted a new drug application late last year.

   Insys has launched one cannabinoid, called Syndros, that helps AIDS patients who experience appetite loss or people experiencing sickness from chemotherapy. Its sales numbers so far fall short of making up for the losses from Subsys. In the company’s third quarter, Syndros brought in $684,000.

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9. The Blind Giants of the Opioid Crisis (Opinion)

   Mar 5, 2018 | US World News & Report

   By Lloyd Sederer

   IN MALCOLM GLADWELL'S nonfiction book, "David and Goliath," he guides us to think beyond the courage of David. While surely that was at work, he had something else working for him: Giants have poor vision; they can be nearly blind.

   "Justice is blind." This expression is meant to convey that proper justice is rendered impartially and objectively. It is a value we hold dearly in the USA. But it is not meant to be taken literally, as the kind of blindness that characterized Goliath. Blinded justice shuts its eyes to what is real, fair and useful. What does this tell us about succeeding in ending the opioid epidemic?

   The bigger government is, the more likely it is to be blind. Government scales up from towns, to cities, to counties, to states (and districts and territories) and then to the federal level. As the dimensions of government grow it can have more trouble seeing the light, or it is powerfully refracted and distorted by political and ideological forces.

   As citizens, we recently witnessed several, overlapping events and claims that should give us ever more foreboding of the blind giants now dwelling in Washington, D.C. There is little sanguine going on to save lives, families and communities from the consequences of opioid (and other) drug dependence.

   The most outlandish, blind swing at the opioid epidemic came from the president himself. On March 1, 2018, Trump proclaimed at a White House summit on opioids that "some countries have a very, very tough penalty – the ultimate penalty. ... And, by the way they have much less of a drug problem than we do." The "ultimate penalty" is of course capital punishment. According to The Economist, 32 countries have the death penalty for drugs (including trafficking) in their laws, but only six employ it: Malaysia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Singapore. Offenders in these countries are executed. Are these countries models for the "law and order" we wish for our country? And who would get caught in this capital vise, should it ever happen? They are principally people with addictions who are selling to support their habits, primarily people of color and those living in poverty. But now this dragnet will reach white, middle-Americans – more of our family, friends and neighbors, as the opioid epidemic has gripped the Midwest, the South and the northeastern states. This is not equitable or impartial justice, as evidenced by the demographics of those already the inmates of our prisons, where, by the way, we have the largest (and most expensive) corrections system in the world.

   Joining the blind and heavy-handed melee is Attorney General Jeff Sessions, our chief justice officer. This Goliath's punitive and myopic views about addiction and how to mitigate its ravages are as vast as is his judicial estate. Sessions had ordered his attorneys general to prosecute, to the limits of the law and its punishments, federal violations related to drug use and distribution (at the street level, and including nonviolent offenses). He wants to "build a wall" (even though the deadliest drugs like Fentanyl are coming in from China and Russia), and make headlines with drug busts.

   At the urging of the president, Sessions also wants to go after drug manufacturers and distributors. The precedent for this exists in the suits won against Big Tobacco. States and cities are also pursuing this strategy, building their cases on deceptive marketing and the consequences (financial and social) of promoting addicting substances, especially OxyContin. This approach, legal without executing anyone, may indeed succeed. But if the current administration recovers the settlements, rather than smaller governments, what can we expect?

   Sessions likely would use litigation awards to further build his enforcement capabilities, a practice he has already demonstrated. More agents, more raids, more federal incarceration. The attorney general remarked on Feb. 27 that "we will use whatever laws and tools we have to hold people accountable if they break our laws." When you have a hammer, everything is a nail, so he wants to nail people with substance use problems. Not to prevent the development of this medical condition or use resources to provide these people with effective treatments.

   A clear-eyed view of history shows us that efforts to arrest ourselves out of the current opioid (and other drug) epidemic or battle with smugglers will be as futile as was Prohibition. Remember the legacy of that misguided, police-enforced "temperance" movement? It gave birth to organized crime of a scale that had never before existed in this country.

   Who are the other White House Goliaths?

   Trump has proposed Richard Baum to fill the long-empty position of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Called the nation's "drug czar," the ONDCP director has a White House position. The last director, Michael Botticelli, was in recovery himself from a substance-use disorder and was disposed to reduce drug demand by focusing on it as a disease. But Baum is a law school professor and criminal policy expert who was selected by the president, we must imagine, to embrace control strategies for drug use, the other side of the demand/control coin.

   Then we have the newly appointed secretary of Health and Human Services. An(other) attorney and former chief executive of the giant Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company, Alex Azar does not bring a perspective of and experience with addiction as a chronic, relapsing disorder to this position atop HHS. In his decade at Lilly, Azar tripled the price of insulin, not a drug of abuse and life-saving for so many people with diabetes. During his tenure, Lilly was fined for colluding to keep the price of insulin high in Mexico. Where is the humanitarian vision in this new administration Goliath?

   Finally, let's not overlook Kellyanne Conway, the mendacious presidential apologist, who months ago was named by Trump to lead the national campaign to reduce opioid use and its deadly consequences. Has she done anything towards that end? Don't think so – as she knows nothing about public health, and is busy on the airwaves trying to protect the president from his tweets and other incontinent utterings. She too, while appearing diminutive, is a big, blind giant.

   I was once told that the horizon for change from city-based initiatives is one year, for state-based initiatives two to three years, and for federal five to 10 years. We have reason to be hopeful as (some) states, cities and counties, the 'Davids' of government, approach the opioid crisis using the lessons of public health. Think about how public-health methods have beat epidemics of cholera, polio and smallpox, reduced tobacco use and popularized seatbelts to decrease car fatalities. Municipalities and states may gain some ground in the next year or two despite the Washington Goliaths.

   But the current federal Goliaths in the White House and other executive offices are not mobilizing the nation's public health capabilities. Instead, they blindly seek to exercise their immense legal and police power in ways that will do far more harm than good, while over 170 people (that we know of) die daily of drug overdoses.

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10. Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill says drug giant is

    Mar 6, 2018 | USA Today

    By Deirdre Shesgreen

    The world’s largest generic drug-maker, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, has refused to fully cooperate with a Senate investigation into whether major opioid manufacturers contributed to the deadly drug epidemic, according to Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who is leading the Senate probe.

    Teva has answered some of McCaskill's questions, providing the Senate committee with general information about its efforts to track and report suspicious orders for its opioid prescriptions, according to a series of letters between McCaskill and the company.

    But Teva refused to give the senator copies of correspondence between the company and its buyers detailing efforts to combat drug diversion, and it also declined to turn over copies of any internal audits that could show whether Teva identified customers who placed questionable opioid orders. Teva, a multinational drug company based in Israel, fills one in every six prescriptions in the United States, according to the firm’s website.

    Various media reports have documented how millions of opioid painkillers were shipped to pharmacies across the country and then ended up on the black market — fueling the current addiction crisis.

    Other major drug manufacturers have complied with the Senate probe, McCaskill said. She is the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

    In two letters to McCaskill last year, Teva raised a series of objections to the inquiry, saying the senator was seeking proprietary information that could be “potentially misused in pending litigation.” Teva is one of many pharmaceutical giants facing a slew of lawsuits from local and state governments, which allege the companies misled physicians and the public by marketing opioids as a safe and rarely addictive pain medication.

    “In such an environment, Teva has a responsibility to be judicious in determining what documents and information to release publicly,” the drug company’s lawyer, James W. Matthews, said in a letter to McCaskill last fall and released by McCaskill this week.  

    McCaskill blasted the company on Tuesday, saying Teva was “stonewalling a Senate investigation” and hampering her examination of a public health crisis that has ravaged communities across the U.S.

    “Teva’s refusal to cooperate with congressional requests strongly suggests they have something to hide,” McCaskill said in a statement. “Teva has been an outlier throughout our investigation, and they can rest assured that I’ll continue to pursue every possible avenue to get them to comply for as long as it takes.”

    But McCaskill’s paths to pursuing Teva are limited. Despite McCaskill’s urging, Sen. Ron Johnson, the GOP chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has refused to sign off on a subpoena to compel Teva’s compliance.

    Johnson said Teva had made a “good-faith effort” to answer McCaskill’s questions. In a January letter to McCaskill, Johnson noted that Teva officials held an informal briefing with McCaskill’s staff to detail its oversight of opioid shipments and diversion prevention efforts. The company also sent McCaskill two letters providing her with general information about its system for identifying and reporting potentially suspicious orders.

    “Teva appears to have spent significant time and resources seeking to address the issues you raised,” Johnson wrote in January, explaining his decision not to approve a subpoena.

    Congress has becoming increasingly focused on the opioid epidemic in recent years, as the scourge spread to every corner of the country. Opioid-related overdoses killed more than 42,000 Americans in 2016, with 40% of those deaths involving a prescription opioid, as opposed to heroin or other forms of the drug, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On average, 115 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, according to the CDC. 

    McCaskill launched her investigation last March, seeking information from five leading opioid drug makers about their sales and marketing tactics, internal addiction studies, and donations to third-party advocacy groups, among other things. She expanded her inquiry in July to examine drug distribution after reports about diversion of opioid prescriptions to the black market. One company, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, paid $35 million last summer to settle allegations that it did not meet its obligations to report suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

    Among other queries, McCaskill asked Teva and other drug companies about any internal programs to stop drug diversion or investigate suspicious transactions between drug distributors and pharmacies.

    In its response, Teva provided McCaskill broad written responses and talked in-person to McCaskill’s staff last year. “Teva has a demonstrated track record of establishing and implementing state-of-the-art systems for preventing diversion of opioid products,” the firm’s lawyer said in its October 2017 letter to McCaskill. “Teva has a strong track record of being a collaborative and solutions-focused partner in working with federal, state and municipal officials in our common effort to address prescription drug abuse.”

    But the company said it would not produce some of the specific documents McCaskill has demanded, arguing that it would not advance her efforts to examine opioid distribution and diversion prevention.

    “Indeed, it seems likely that publicly disclosing specific and sensitive proprietary information about Teva's customers will chill the willingness of such customers to share information with your committee and participate in our collective efforts to address opioid abuse,” Matthews wrote. And, he said, the pending lawsuits precluded Teva from complying.

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11. Opioid Legislation Takes Center Stage in House, Senate

    Mar 5, 2018 | Bloomberg Law

    By Bronwyn Mixter

    Opioid legislation will take center stage again as a House panel will consider additional bills that include giving doctors more information about the addiction history of their patients.

    The House Energy and Commerce Committee is working on a legislative package to combat the epidemic with the goal of getting it to the House floor by Memorial Day, Rep. Greg. Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the committee, said March 1 at a forum on opioids. As part of it’s work, the committee will hold two hearings, one in March, to examine bills that also would improve the safe disposal of unused medications and establish a database to compile information on federal efforts to stop the the opioid crisis, he said.

    Congress is grappling with how to combat the widespread opioid abuse epidemic. Opioids, including prescription opioids, heroin, and fentanyl, killed more than 42,000 people in 2016, more than any year on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Walden said his committee has been developing bipartisan legislation for months and combating the opioid crisis is his top priority.

    “The crisis that is ravaging our nation has continued to grow,” and “our efforts simply must grow to meet this challenge,” Walden said.

    The committee also held a hearing Feb. 28 on other opioid legislation. At that hearing, committee members appeared split along party lines over how to address the opiod crisis, which indicates trouble for the legislative package. The lawmakers discussed legislation to greatly expand the attorney general’s authority to ban potential dangerous new drugs such as synthetic opioids and to encourage doctors and pharmacists to get more education on opioid prescribing and phone prescriptions.

    Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), ranking member of the committee, didn’t return a Bloomberg Law request for comment on the committee’s efforts. At the last hearing he said he’s uneasy with expanding the attorney general’s authority but he hopes to work with his colleagues so “that we can all support legislation that will help address the opioid crisis.”

    “Both the House and the Senate appear motivated to get a comprehensive bill on President Trump’s desk this year,” Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst Brian Rye told Bloomberg Law March 2. “Senator [Rob] Portman (R-Ohio) recently unveiled the CARA 2.0 bill, and while Republicans and Democrats in the House aren’t yet on the same page regarding all the elements of their legislative package, I expect them to iron out those differences in the next month or two.”

    The Senate’s Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) 2.0 (bill number not available), introduced Feb. 27, would increase funding authorization levels for the CARA programs enacted in 2016 and put in place additional policy reforms to help combat the opioid epidemic, such as limiting opioid prescriptions to three days. The first CARA was a bipartisan bill designed to ensure that federal resources were devoted to evidence-based opioid education, treatment, and recovery programs that work.

    Portman introduced the bill along with Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Dan Sullivan (R-Ar.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).House Bill on Patient Information

    One bill the Energy and Commerce Committee will consider is Jessie’s Law ( H.R. 1554), which would require the Health and Human Services Department to develop standards for hospitals and physicians on how to display a history of opioid addiction in the medical records of patients.

    Jessie’s Law “would help ensure doctors have access to a consenting patient’s prior history of addiction in order to make fully informed care and treatment decisions,” Walden said.

    The bill, introduced March 15, 2017, by Reps. Tim Walberg (R- Mich.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), is named after Michigan resident Jessie Grubb, who died of an opioid overdose. Grubb was a recovering heroin addict and was prescribed opioids after a hip surgery by a doctor who didn’t know her prior history of addiction.

    The Senate version of the bill ( S. 581) was passed by the Senate with unanimous consent in August 2017.Clearinghouse of Information

    Walden also said the committee will examine a bill ( H.R. 4284) that would establish a clearinghouse to compile information on federal efforts to stop the opioid crisis. The bill was introduced Nov. 10, 2017, by Rep. Robert E. Latta (R-Ohio).

    “The information would be used to help federal, state, and local officials develop the most effective strategies to prevent addiction, treat those that are addicted, and keep prescription drugs from falling into the wrong hands,” Walden said.

    The bill would establish a public electronic database to collect the information. The database also would track federal funding being used to combat the epidemic.Disposing Unused Medications

    Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) also is planning to introduce a bill on unused medication that will be considered by the committee.

    Hudson’s bill would require the Government Accountability Office to study new technologies that claim to be able to safely dispose of opioids and other unused medications, Walden said. The bill also would require the attorney general to establish guidelines for the safe in-home disposal of prescription drugs.

    While there’s no “silver-bullet solution” to the epidemic, the proper disposal of opioids could make a big difference, Hudson said Feb. 28 at an Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing on opioids.

    The American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association didn’t return requests comment on the bills.

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12. FDA chief wants more mail inspectors to stem opioid influx

    Mar 5, 2018 | ABC News

    By Matthew Perrone

    The head of the Food and Drug Administration wants to more than double the number of packages his agency inspects for illicit drugs, an effort to stem a deadly flow of opioids that increasingly runs through the international mail supply.

    FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Monday he needs more staffers to intercept opioids that are being disguised as other drugs and supplements.

    "We're finding an increasing number of opioids coming in through those facilities," said Gottlieb, in an interview with The Associated Press. "In some ways the FDA is the last line of defense."

    At a time of massive growth in shipments of packages from China as a result of e-commerce, the FDA, the U.S. Postal service and other government agencies are struggling to intercept shipments of opioids such as fentanyl to U.S. buyers.

    International shipments processed by the postal service nearly doubled in just three years, to 275 million in fiscal year 2016 from 150 million in 2013, according to federal records.

    Gottlieb says opioid producers often turn synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which is cheap and extremely potent, into pills and tablets that resemble other prescription drugs, such as antidepressants. Fentanyl can be up to 50 times more potent than heroin, according to federal authorities.

    He wants FDA staff to have the manpower to inspect 100,000 packages per year that have been flagged as suspicious by customs agents, up from its current capacity of roughly 40,000. That would require more than doubling FDA staff, which now consists of 23 staffers dispersed between the nation's nine international mail facilities, according to the agency. That number has tripled since September, when the agency had just seven full-time staff assigned to the posts nationwide.

    The work is time-intensive. Shipments must be tested in a lab and put through a legal review before they can be destroyed.

    At the facility at New York's Kennedy Airport, the FDA's five inspectors open and process about 75 packages per day, according to Gottlieb.

    Gottlieb visited the New York hub Monday with members of Congress and their staff. He's hoping lawmakers will approve increased spending for his agency.

    "The reason why we had members of Congress here today is because we're looking at trying to step up our footprint in those facilities even more," Gottlieb said.

    Members of Congress have been debating new measures aimed at stemming the flow of opioids in the mail.

    Earlier this year, Senate investigators said incomplete tracking data used by the U.S. postal service allows Chinese sellers to ship fentanyl to U.S. buyers. Legislation introduced in Congress would require the postal service to collect tracking data for all shipments to the U.S., but it's not clear that foreign mail authorities would comply.

    The opioid epidemic was initially driven by prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin. But prescribing of those drugs has been falling since 2011 due to policies by government, medical and law enforcement officials designed to reverse years of overprescribing.

    The majority of opioid deaths now involve illegal drugs, especially the ultra-potent fentanyl. Deaths tied to fentanyl and related drugs doubled in 2016, to more than 19,000, dragging down Americans' life expectancy for the second year in a row.

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13. The Staggering Scope Of America's Opioid Crisis (Opinion)

    Mar 5, 2018 | Forbes

    By John Hart

    Last September former Fox News host Eric Bolling was riding in the car with his wife after dinner. A call went to voicemail. It was a frantic message from one of his son’s friends. Bolling returned the call and simply asked, “Is he alive?” He wasn’t. The Bolling’s only son, Eric Chase, was gone from an accidental overdose. He took a Xanax laced with fentanyl, a deadly opioid, and never woke up.

    “We never saw it coming. We never thought we would get that call. Every parent doesn’t want it. We got it,” Bolling recalled.

    Bolling’s story, which he shared at a recent White House Summit “Opioids: The Crisis Next Door” is being repeated at an alarming rate across the country.

    Any life cut short is a tragedy whether from disease, drugs, violence or an accident. But the scope of the opioid crisis is staggering. Opioids – a class of drugs that includes everything from heroin to commonly prescribed pain medications – killed 42,249 Americans in 2016. That’s seven Parkland school shootings per day or a September 11 attack every three weeks.

    More Americans died from opioids in 2016 than breast cancer (41,070), auto accidents (37,461) or guns (38,000). More than 60 percent of gun deaths are suicides, about a third are homicides and the rest are accidents.

    Opioid deaths accounted for two thirds of drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2016 and the numbers are going up a rapid rate. Deaths related to opioids increased by 28 percent between 2015-2016. The scope of the opioid crisis is so enormous it is a major reason why life expectancy in United States declined for the second year in a row. Some experts fear opioid deaths could top 500,000 over the next decade.

    The conventional wisdom about opioids is not entirely accurate in two important ways. As the Washington Post notes, the opioid crisis isn’t just a rural white issue. The Post reported, “[T]he death rate from opioids is rising most steeply among black Americans, particularly in urban areas.” Second, while doctor prescribed painkillers are fueling addictions in some cases, Sally Satel, an addiction psychiatrist notes the “drivers [of opioid deaths] for the past few years are heroin and, mostly, fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 times as potent as heroin.”

    The White House convened last week’s summit to raise awareness and call for a response from every sector of society – public and private. In October of last year the president declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. The president’s opioid commission followed up with a list 56 recommendationsthat include proposals for additional funding for interdiction, prevention, treatment and recovery.

    Each of these initiatives is important and a part of the solution. But what stands out from the administration’s response is a refreshing way of thinking about social policy. In the opioid response, a Trump Doctrine is emerging that says there is no one-size-fits-all Washington solution. Instead, the answers already exist in local communities across the country. Government’s response should be to provide assistance or get out of the way. The following exchange at last week’s summit captured the administration’s approach to facilitating better coordination with states and local leaders.

    Gary Tennis, a former prosecutor who spent 26 years in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, said, “I saw a parade of individuals, criminal defendants, going before me with untreated or undertreated addiction. Most of the problems we were trying to solve in the criminal justice system were a consequence of a failed health care policy of not providing enough treatment.”

    Tennis acknowledge this was a “multipronged problem” with “many aspects to the solution” but asked the administration to devote special attention to waiving outdated regulations that were frustrating local efforts to provide treatment. In particular, Tennis asked the administration to waive a regulation called the “IMD exclusion” that was designed to prevent the warehousing of the mentally ill. The regulation is preventing facilities with more than 16 beds from providing substance abuse treatment which was not the law's intent, Tennis argued.

    Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar agreed and invited regulatory correction and guidance from front line experts. “We’re open for business,” Azar said.

    Azar joked, “I actually berated the governors saying, ‘Why have I only gotten five of these [waivers] so far?’ We are eager to work with them, we have a streamlined process for approving them, and I want more … I’m hoping we’ll see a faster clip. We can handle those quite quickly. Those waivers are easy to do.”

    Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson echoed the administration’s desire to empower state and local leaders. “It’s not a simply a crisis of health. It’s also a crisis of hope,” Carson said. “We’re studying local success stories ... that is a key factor in making progress.”

    No intractable problem is ever solved quickly or without tremendous difficulty. But the administration’s “can do” attitude, regulatory flexibility and respect for local leaders will make a real difference.

    President Trump offered remarks at the conclusion of the summit and shared how his brother’s struggle with alcohol addiction impacted his life. The message that came across from the administration was clear and compelling: You are not alone. You don’t have to suffer in isolation. We want to help you make a difference. We’ve got your back. We’ll offer support. And, when necessary, we’ll get out of your way.

    Using the administration’s unique power to convene, and giving victims and their families a platform to offer real ideas and solutions, is an important part of the process. Bolling implored the audience, and the nation: “Do your children a favor. Have the discussion with them. And do it again. And again. And get involved in your kids’ lives … It matters. You can save someone.”

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Southeast (NC, GA, WV, TN, FL, LA)

14. City Council votes for bidding process for opioid legal contracts

    Mar 6, 2018 | Fayetteville Observer (NC)

    By Monica Vendituoli

    Fayetteville City Council voted 7-2 in favor of having the city attorney put out a request for information to bid for legal services regarding a civil action against prescription opioid manufacturers and wholesale distributors.

    Mayor Mitch Colvin placed the opioid lawsuit on the Monday night work session agenda because he opposed City Attorney Karen McDonald’s awarding of the legal contract to two lawyers without going through the city’s bidding process.

    Colvin said the bidding process was adopted in 2015 for the city to be more inclusive to local and minority firms.

    “There needs to be local and minority inclusion in this city, and it has not happened for years,” Colvin said. “Everything that comes forward, we can’t say we will do it right next time. We need to get it right this time.”

    McDonald disagreed with Colvin’s characterization of events.

    “Staff has adhered to the policies, mayor,” McDonald said.

    In February, McDonald told the council that lawyers Terry Hutchens and Billy Richardson, the Democratic state representative, reached out to the city.

    She said Hutchens and Richardson, acting on behalf of his private practice, have joined together with a consortium of lawyers throughout the nation to take civil action against opioid manufacturers and wholesale distributors.

    The goal of the consortium is to recover the costs of dealing with opioid abuse and return that money to municipalities such as Fayetteville.

    Shortly after the vote, Colvin sent McDonald an email outlining his opposition to how the contracts were awarded.

    “This is unacceptable,” Colvin wrote in the email obtained by the Fayetteville Observer via a public records request.

    McDonald said that state law does not require having the city put out legal contracts bids.

    She said that Richardson and Hutchens were the only lawyers to offer to represent the city on the opioid issue.

    Councilman Bill Crisp accused Colvin of “stirring the pot,” after receiving Colvin’s email on the subject of the legal contracts.

    “We left the room with council members satisfied,” Crisp wrote in the email sent Feb. 15 that was obtained via an email obtained through public records request. “But because you are listening to friends of yours, you are ‘stirring the pot’ and want to bring this back for discussion? You are one member of the ruling body of this city. Are we to expect that anytime you personally disagree with a ‘management’ decision, you intend to ‘harp’ on the issue until you get your way? This sounds like ‘Tzarist Rule’ and not uncommon action as we witnessed before.”

    Colvin responded in an email on that same day accusing Crisp of changing his mind and votes “on and off of camera.”

    Crisp sided with Colvin’s position during the meeting and the motion to put out the request for information bids for the legal services within 15 days.

    Colvin and council members Johnny Dawkins, Jim Arp, D.J. Haire, Larry Wright and Tyrone Williams supported the motion, while Mayor Pro Tem Ted Mohn and councilwoman Tisha Waddell voted in opposition.

    Halfway through the discussion Monday evening, Richardson walked out. He said his law firm qualified under the city’s inclusion policy, as it is a local firm with minority partners that is owned by a veteran.

    Richardson said he is worried that the council doesn’t understand the time constraints associated with the litigation.

    “What they don’t understand is this is a national litigation where the court is ordering the national attorneys to sign up people as fast as possible,” Richardson said.

    Richardson said he doesn’t want to see Fayetteville lose out on receiving damages that could help the city.

    “If they would have let me speak tonight, they could have heard some of that,” Richardson said.

    Colvin noted that Cumberland County voted in favor of going through a similar bidding process for its legal counsel for the opioid lawsuit. And the mayor said he feels the city needs to abide by its own policies, even if it goes against what was done for years.

    “This is a cultural change,” Colvin said. “They don’t come quick.”

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15. Winston-Salem joins lawsuit against opioid manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | Winston-Salem Journal (NC)

    By Wesley Young

    Winston-Salem is joining a growing list of local governments filing suit against opioid manufacturers and distributors, with no cost to the city for joining in the effort.

    Local attorney Garry Whitaker will be the city’s connection to the suit, which is being filed by a consortium of law firms with experience in product liability lawsuits. The Winston-Salem City Council approved joining the lawsuits during its Monday meeting.

    Whitaker said the city’s action to join the lawsuits puts it among 24 counties and four cities in the state that have joined in the legal action, in lawsuits that involve so many jurisdictions across the country that they are termed “multidistrict litigation.”

    The law firms leading the suits are scattered from Texas to Florida to West Virginia. Whitaker said the lawsuits are demanding among other things that opioid manufacturers carry out a 10-year plan that includes law enforcement enhancements.

    The premise of the lawsuit, as stated in the city’s resolution approving the action, is that opioid manufacturing and distributing companies may have violated state and federal laws that are designed to prevent the diversion of prescribed medication into the illegal drug market.

    Council Member Dan Besse said his own research on the opioid problem causes him to believe that opioid manufacturers have incentivized the “over-distribution” of opioid drugs, leading to their over-prescription.

    “This (suit) will be an important part of removing the incentive,” Besse said.

    Whitaker was selected to be part of the multi-pronged effort because the council wanted a local attorney involved.

    Forsyth County recently voted to participate in the same legal effort, and for both city and county the terms are the same: the law firms collect 25 percent of any financial reward, but the city doesn’t pay anything if the legal effort does not bear fruit.

    Council Member James Taylor said the opioid crisis reminds him of earlier drug problems such as crack cocaine, and said this one needs action as well.

    In other business, the Winston-Salem City Council approved up to $147,834 in economic development incentives for The Clearing House to encourage that company to carry out a $25 million expansion here.

    The approval comes on top of $179,038 in economic development incentives from Forsyth County, and possible state assistance as well.

    The Clearing House has 175 jobs at a site in Union Cross Business Park, and is considering the addition of up to 50 additional jobs paying an average salary of almost $100,000 a year plus benefits.

    The company processes check and credit-card payments for a number of major banks, and opened a location here in 2006 when it was searching for a lower-risk site following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    The company does have the option of expanding in its New York location, city officials said, but they hope the company chooses to expand here.

    The company has agreed to hold a job fair here, and company officials said they would meet with officials from Winston-Salem State University to explore partnership opportunities.

    The incentives equal 50 percent of the net new taxes that the city would collect if the company carries through with the expansion.

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16. Hall County planning to sue opioid manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | Forsyth County News (GA)

    By Nick Bowman

    Citing local damage caused by the opioid epidemic, Hall County is hiring an Athens law firm to sue prescription drug manufacturers and others involved in opioid production and distribution.

    The Hall County Board of Commissioners heard a proposal from county attorney Bill Blalock to hire Athens law firm Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Ashley to file a civil suit in federal court.

    Blalock told commissioners that the use of opiates has risen “sky high” since the 1990s and that it has been a significant drain on county resources, from first responders helping an overdose patient to the workload at local hospitals to the Hall County jail and court systems.

    The lawsuit would be filed against more than a dozen companies, and it likely would be handled in the multidistrict litigation in Cleveland, Ohio. The lead counsel from Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Ashley would be Henry Garrard III.

    While there are more than 200 lawsuits filed against various companies in the prescription drug industry, Hall County’s suit isn’t a class-action lawsuit. The county is the only plaintiff with the Athens firm even though it will be heard by the same Ohio judge.

    Blalock said the opioid lawsuits are similar to the suits filed in the 1990s against the nation’s four largest tobacco manufacturers: Philip Morris Inc., R. J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard.

    In the tobacco master settlement agreement, the four companies agreed to pay $206 billion to 46 states in the first 25 years of the agreement.

    This time around, the suit would be filed against the “manufacturers of prescription opiates and those in the chain of distribution of prescription opiates responsible for the opioid epidemic which is plaguing” the county, according to the resolution authorizing the suit.

    Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Ashley would not charge the county for its services. Instead, it would take a 30 percent cut of any settlement agreement or judgment against the prescription drug industry.

    The law firm confirmed that it was working with the county on an agreement to handle the lawsuit but declined comment until after the lawsuit was authorized.

    Commissioners are set to vote on the lawsuit during their Tuesday, March 6, voting meeting. The meeting usually takes place on Thursday but was moved to Tuesday to accommodate scheduling conflicts on the part of the commission.

    Commissioners signaled support for the lawsuit on Monday, March 5.

    “There’s probably not a person or a family in this room that hasn’t been affected by this,” Commissioner Scott Gibbs said of the opioid epidemic.

    Meanwhile, Board of Commissioners Chairman Richard Higgins said the lawsuit “needs to be done” and that the epidemic “just keeps getting worse and worse.”

    If commissioners authorize the lawsuit, Blalock said he expects it would be filed before the end of the week. He had not seen a draft of the suit as of Monday.

    For the past few weeks, The Times has dug into the local opioid epidemic in its podcast, “Back to Life.” In the latest episode, local law enforcement officers talk about their fight against the drug trade and the toll opioids have taken on the community.

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17. Irwin Co. commissioners vote to join opioid class-action lawsuit

    Mar 6, 2018 | WALB (GA)

    By Jim Wallace

    On Monday night, the Irwin County Commission voted unanimously to join a large class-action lawsuit against pharmaceutical manufacturers of painkillers.

    Irwin County Commission Attorney Warren Mixon said commissioners voted unanimously to join the national class action lawsuit against big drug companies and healthcare suppliers.

    A number of municipalities and counties across Georgia are joining in the litigation, saying they want big pharma to pay for the scourge that the opioid epidemic has led to in Georgia.

    Mixon said Irwin County commissioners said joining the lawsuit would cost nothing and could lead to some financial gain for the county.

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18. Wood County Commission chooses firm for opioids lawsuit

    Mar 6, 2018 | Parkersburg News & Sentinel (WV)

    By Brett Dunlap

    The Wood County Commission is going with a Clarksburg law firm with ties to a firm with officies nationally to be part of a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors.

    The commission announced Monday it will be joining with the Ford Law Office of Clarksburg, which is working with Marc J. Bern & Partners of New York in a lawsuit they are drawing up.

    Three law firms recently made presentations to the Wood County Commission on why the county should sign with them to represent the county in lawsuits against the manufacturers and distributors of opioid medications. They allege that the companies have brought a far larger number of pills into the state than is needed for its population. This has led to the large number of addictions, overdose deaths and the state’s opioid crisis, they said.

    Commission President Blair Couch, citing a 2016 report from the U.S Drug Enforcement Agency, said Wood County ranked fifth in the state with 27,829,000 pills dispensed between 2007-2012.

    ”Based on our population, that is a pretty big number,” Couch said.

    Kanawha County was first with 66 million pills dispensed, Cabell County was second with 40 million, Logan County was third with 35 million and Mingo County was fourth with 32 million.

    Other counties comparable to Wood County were Raleigh and Harrison counties with 27 million pills dispensed each, Couch said.

    ”We saw excellent presentations from three law firms,” Couch said.

    The other law firms presenting were the Fitzsimmons Law Firm of Wheeling and Hill, Carper, Bee & Deitzler of Charleston. The Chafin Law Firm of Williamson, W.Va., sent in a proposal for the county to consider.

    All of the law firms had fees that resulted in around 25 percent of any judgment or settlement. Some included their expenses in that while others had expenses paid on top of that fee, Couch said.

    Bern told the commission last week their fee is a straight fee of 25 percent of any judgment or settlement, including expenses.

    ”This is the one,” Couch said.

    Couch said, for him, it was the fact Bern had lost his son to an overdose through opioid addiction that was a deciding factor.

    ”I think this is personal to him, very much so,” he said. ”We wanted an attorney with more in the game than just a dollar amount. I feel he has more of a personal connection to this than anyone else.”

    Commissioner Bob Tebay said all of the law firms were qualified, but in the end it is about helping the county.

    ”It is not about the money,” he said. ”It is about getting rid of the nuisance of opioids.”

    Couch said they can see how the problem is impacting the county with overdose deaths and addiction issues as well as having an effect on the county’s increasing jail bill.

    ”It is a scourge and it has hit families from every community in Wood County,” he said. ”Everyone has had someone they are close to that has had an issue they have either overcome or they have succumbed to it. There has been harm done to our county that has impacted our budget.”

    Any money resulting from this lawsuit would be put toward drug education and treatment, the commission said.

    ”We have to get these funds to do these things,” Couch said.

    Commissioner Jimmy Colombo said the majority of prisoners they are sending to the North Central Regional Jail are for drug-related offenses.

    ”This has been a huge impact to everyone’s pocket in Wood County,” he said. ”It is harmful to the county to have to spend over $2 million a year just to cover that.”

    The commission notified Bern of its selection over the telephone.

    ”We will do the best job possible for you,” Bern said over the phone. ”I am totally committed to this.”

    He will be drawing up a resolution detailing the impact the opioid crisis has had on Wood County.

    The commission is expected to take action on it Thursday.

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19. WV Lawfirm Files Class Action Suit Against Purdue Pharma, Others, on Behalf of NAS Babies

    Mar 6, 2018 | West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WV)

    By Kara Leigh Lofton

    A Charleston-based law firm has filed a class action suit against 21 medical companies, including the opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma to sue for damages incurred by prenatal exposure to opioids.

    The suit was filed this week by the firm Thompson and Barney. Kevin Thompson said the intent is to create a fund for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, meaning infants born dependent to opioids.

    “In this case the equitable relief would be a medical monitoring fund,” Thompson said.

    Thompson said a medical monitoring fund would allow for children to be tested for possible neurological, developmental and behavioral disorders and would fund treatment should it be needed. Rather than placing the burden on families and insurance companies, he said, manufacturers and distributors need to foot the bill. 

    “From a nationwide basis they have some statutory duties to watch the market and see when there is unusual activity going on,” Thompson said. “The million and millions and millions of pills that went into tiny Kermit and Williamson – the distributers should have stopped it, they should have investigated it, they shouldn’t have just smiled and sent more pills and made money.”

    The suit would also create a damages fund that would be released to the children when they turned 18. That money could be used for education, transportation or further medical care as needed.

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20. County files lawsuit against opioid manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | Murfeesboro Post (TN)

    By Staff

    Rutherford County has filed a lawsuit against prescription opioid manufacturers and distributors to recover taxpayer money spent to combat the opioid epidemic, according to Mark Chalos, Managing Partner of the Nashville office of the national plaintiffs’ law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP.

    The complaint, filed in federal court in Tennessee, alleges that the named opiate drug manufacturers and distributors and their agents deliberately and repeatedly violated federal and state law by widely and falsely promoting highly addictive opioids as safe and necessary, all the while concealing the true risks of the drugs.

    The complaint alleges that defendants conspired to manufacture and distribute millions of doses of highly addictive opioids, knowing that they were being trafficked and used for illicit purposes, and recklessly disregarded their devastating effect on the taxpayers and government of Rutherford County. As a result of this conspiracy, Rutherford County taxpayers have spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight the opioid crisis and manage its devastating effects on their community, according to the complaint.

    “We are at the front lines of this epidemic through our justice system, ambulance services, recovery programs and other county programs,” said Rutherford County Mayor Ernest Burgess. “It is our job to protect taxpayer money and address this horrible epidemic that is at our doorstep. This lawsuit is one of the many ways we intend to stand up for the residents of this county.”

    Named Defendants include Purdue Pharma, Cephalon, Teva Pharmaceutical, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Noramco Inc., Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions, Mallinckrodt, Allergan, Actavis, Watson Pharmaceuticals, Insys Therapeutics, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation, Cardinal Health, McKesson Corporation, and additional affiliated businesses and entities.

    The complaint further alleges that no medical breakthrough or newly-discovered treatment path justified the defendants’ overweening prescription of opioids for chronic pain, but rather that their inflated marketing and sales goals opened the floodgates for expanded opioid use and rampant abuse. “Defendants falsely and misleadingly, and contrary to the language of their drugs’ labels: (1) downplayed the serious risk of addiction; (2) promoted the concept of ‘pseudoaddiction’ and thus advocated that the signs of addiction should be treated with more opioids; (3) exaggerated the effectiveness of screening tools in preventing addiction; (4) claimed that opioid dependence and withdrawal are easily managed; (5) denied the risks of higher opioid dosages; and (6) exaggerated the effectiveness of ‘abuse-deterrent’ opioid formulations to prevent abuse and addiction. Conversely, defendants also falsely touted the benefits of long-term opioid use, including the supposed ability of opioids to improve function and quality of life, even though there was no good scientific evidence to support defendants’ claims.”

    Rutherford County alleges claims for racketeering, conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, public nuisance, negligence, and unjust enrichment, and seeks all legal and equitable relief as allowed by law under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) and Tennessee statutory and common law. The Complaint seeks repayment of costs associated with the opioid epidemic in Rutherford County, including actual damages, treble damages, equitable relief, forfeiture as deemed proper by the Court, attorney’s fees and all costs and expenses of suit and pre- and post-judgment interest.

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21. City of Jacksonville sues 'big pharma' for opioid deaths, costs

    Mar 5, 2018 | News4JAX (FL)

    By Jenese Harris

    The city of Jacksonville is suing some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the United States, claiming that manufacturers, distributors and executives are all responsible for the city's deadly opioid epidemic.

    The 144-page lawsuit "for damages and injunctive relief" last Tuesday claims over a dozen opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma -- which makes OxyContin -- Teva Pharmaceuticals and Insys Therapeutics, four distributors and five individuals each played a role in the opioid epidemic that has cost lives, as well as resources of rescue and medical personnel saving people who had overdosed.

    The 11 counts against manufacturers, distributors or executives in the lawsuit range from common law fraud and negligent misrepresentation to deceptive and unfair trade practices, mail and wire fraud 

    According to the lawsuit, John Kapoor, the founder, former chairman and CEO of Insys, was indicted on Oct. 24 in federal court in Boston. He and co-conspirators are accused of paying kickbacks to doctors to write large numbers of prescriptions. Florida was a targeted state in that plan, and Subsys, a fentanyl-based pain medication, was part of some of the claims. Jacksonville has similar claims. 

    The city does not list an exact amount it is seeking in the lawsuit, but based upon the money the city has already spent to fight the opioid epidemic, it could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

    Jacksonville Fire Rescue Department spent $4.5 million transporting overdose victims in 2016 alone. Last year, the city's funded over $1 million for a program trying to get opioid addicts into treatment.

    In past suits not affiliated with Jacksonville, some of the same companies named in this lawsuit have paid out millions for fines. 

    McKesson, the largest wholesale distributor in the United States, agreed in January to pay a $150 million fine to U.S. Department of Justice for violations. In December 2016, Cardinal agreed to a $34 million fine to resolve allegations that it failed to report to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

    McKeeson, Cardinal and ABC have each been investigated and fined by the DEA for failing to:Operate its mandatory internal oversight system in good faith.Report suspicious orders to the DEA.Halt the shipment of "suspicious orders for controlled substances" when they were discovered.

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22. Pharmaceutical industry sued over infant opioid addiction

    Mar 5, 2018 | The Louisiana Weekly (LA)

    By Ryan Whirty

    Citing “false representations and concealments… made with the intent to deceive Louisiana consumers,” petitioners filed this month a class-action lawsuit against the pharmaceutical industry calling for the protection, treatment and compensation of children born addicted to opioids and suffering from an array of resulting disorders.

    The lawsuit, filed in the 22nd Judicial Court for St. Tammany Parish, charges more than 20 defendants within the pharmaceutical industry — including drug-production companies, pharmacies, and distribution contractors tasked with convincing doctors and other medical providers to prescribe opioids — with willfully withholding information about opioids and using deceptive advertising regarding such drugs.

    Specifically, the lawsuit cites the dramatic rise in Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome in infants born to opioid-addicted mothers. While the general opioid epidemic in the United States has received a great deal of media coverage and solicited much political and public concern, the lawsuit filed this month raises the issue of the crippling effect the drugs can have on children of addicted mothers.

    As such, the recent class action is believed to be the first such lawsuit of its kind in the nation, and the plaintiffs in the case are hoping the pharmaceutical industry in Louisiana can be held accountable for the allegedly deceptive tactics they used to boost profit at the expense of the public in general and infants specifically.

    “It was a huge lie,” said Dr. Brent Bell, one of the lead medical experts backing the action. “There was a lot of misinformation, and a lot of providers bought into it. [The drug industry] bamboozled everybody for a long time.”

    Scott Bickford of the law firm Martzell Bickford and Centola of New Orleans said children affected with NAS not only have very difficult infancies, but, if they survive their first few years, they often develop additional disorders and conditions as they age into adolescence, such as ADHD and emotional volatility.

    “The plaintiffs in this case are the innocent children who were victimized, if you will, by being exposed to opioids,” Bickford said. “As they progress as children, these kids can face lifelong issues.

    “We’re hoping we can address the wrong done to children in Louisiana,” Bickford added. Added Bell: “The boys get angry, the girls get depressed.”

    The lead plaintiff in the case is Tyler Roach on behalf of his infant son, initials K.E.R., who was born addicted to opioids and suffering from NAS. K.E.R.’s pregnant mother became addicted to opioids while being treated for an auto accident. As a result, K.E.R. required intensive medical care after birth. Now three years old, K.E.R. has endured behavioral, speech and hearing therapy and, according to doctors, faces a very real possibility of lifelong mental deficiencies from being exposed to opioids while in the womb.

    The lawsuit vividly describes the conditions that faced K.E.R. after birth, when the child was diagnosed with NAS, which involves the sudden, severe opioid withdrawal symptoms in infants. “K.E.R. was forced to endure a painful start to his life; crying excessively, arching his back, refusing to feed, and shaking,” the lawsuit states. “…K.E.R. spent his first days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit writhing in agony as he went through detoxification.”

    However, while Roach and his son are the lead plaintiffs, the lawsuit is a class action case representing many infants suffering from NAS, as well as their families.

    “K.E.R.’s experience is part of an opioid epidemic sweeping through the United States, including Louisiana,” the lawsuit says, “that has caused thousands of infants great suffering and continual developmental issues. This epidemic is the largest health care crisis in U.S. history. K.E.R. brings this class action to eliminate the hazard caused to public health and safety caused by the opioid epidemic and to abate the nuisance caused by Defendants’ false, deceptive and unfair marketing and/or unlawful diversion of prescription opioids.”

    The lawsuit cites several allegedly deceptive, well-funded practices on the part of the pharmaceutical industry to increase the companies’ bottom line, such as understating the possibility of opioid addiction from long-term use; relying on insufficient, incomplete studies and data to push their products to medical providers and patients; and treating doctors to dinners and other events at which deceptive presentations were made.

    The suit also refers to legal and medical precedents established in other states, such as Florida and New York, as support for its filing.

    Ultimately, in addition to holding the pharmaceutical industry accountable for its alleged misinformation campaign, the recently filed lawsuit hopes to solicit damages from the defendants that can be used to increase access to treatment programs for NAS-afflicted children, and to conduct further research and enhance the quality of existing treatments to combat the crisis.

    “These babies need money to address the individual damages sustained by opioid addiction,” Bickford said. “They need access to treatment and the ability to diagnose [NAS].”

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Midwest (MO, OH, IL, IN)

23. Joplin Council Votes for Lawsuit Against Opioid Manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | KODE (MO)

    By Staff

    Joplin city leaders vote to enter a class action lawsuit against major opioid manufacturers.

    In the legal documents, they call the drug problem an epidemic, and council wasted no time passing the ordinance as they too believe it is a big issue. The lawsuit will quote - "pursue all civil remedies against those in the chain of distribution of prescription opiates responsible for the epidemic plaguing Joplin."

    "I don't know the specific number of cities but the city will be joining a class action lawsuit against the largest opioid manufacturers in the United States, the city will seek to recover its cost that it expends to deal with this public nuisance,” says Peter Edwards, City Attorney.

    The city owes no money unless they win the case, if they do win, the law firm of Carry, Danis and Lowe will keep 30 percent. But, there is no specific amount detailed in the legal documents.

    The lawsuit claims the manufacturers failed to warn, caused a nuisance, and "negligence per se" as well as that the defendants worked in concert with each other.

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24. Joplin council votes for JPD budget and lawsuit against opioid manufacturers

    Mar 5, 2018 | Fourstates Homepage (MO)

    By Austin Hyslip

    Joplin city leaders vote to enter a class action lawsuit against major opioid manufacturers.

    In the legal documents, they call the drug problem an epidemic, and council wasted no time passing the ordinance as they too believe it is a big issue. The lawsuit will quote - "pursue all civil remedies against those in the chain of distribution of prescription opiates responsible for the epidemic plaguing Joplin."

    "I don't know the specific number of cities but the city will be joining a class action lawsuit against the largest opioid manufacturers in the United States, the city will seek to recover its cost that it expends to deal with this public nuisance,” says Peter Edwards, City Attorney.

    The city owes no money unless they win the case, if they do win, the law firm of Carry, Danis and Lowe will keep 30 percent. But, there is no specific amount detailed in the legal documents.

    The lawsuit claims the manufacturers failed to warn, caused a nuisance, and "negligence per se" as well as that the defendants worked in concert with each other.

    Meanwhile the Joplin Police Department will also receive money from the city to purchase 51 body cameras for every officer. Originally JPD applied for a grant but didn't get it, causing city leaders to approve the spending. 

    Funds will be split, $55 thousand dollars will come from the budget with the rest from the drug forfeiture funds, bringing the total cost to $124 thousand dollars.

    The department also has the go ahead to apply for three grants from the Missouri Department of Transportation that would pay for DWI enforcement. A cause that's important to the city as well as the department.

    "DWI enforcement is something we take very serious, a lot of times the victims are someone that is completely innocent are the ones that are greatly impacted by that and so we use those funds to help us enforce our DWI efforts,” says Chief Matt Stewart.

    The three grants total more than $95 thousand dollars and will be used for training and equipment. Chief Stewart says a large chunk is to pay for the overtime.

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25. Joplin To Join Class Action Lawsuit Against Opioid Manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | KZRG (MO)

    By Jon Lancello

    Monday night (3/5), the Joplin City Council voted to join a class action lawsuit against opioid manufacturers. Joplin City Attorney Peter Edwards tells News Talk KZRG the City won’t put up any money to take part in the lawsuit.

    “The City will seek to recover its costs that it expends to deal with this public nuisance.  It’s unknown at this time whether or not it will produce any sort of recovery.”

    Edwards didn’t know how many cities are involved in the class action lawsuit….but said the illegal distribution of opioids is a serious public health and safety crisis for Joplin.

     

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26. City of Joplin Joins Lawsuit Against Opioid Manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | KOAM (MO)

    By Chris Warner

    The City of Joplin is joining a number of other communities across the country in a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers.

    Ashley Micklethwaite has been fighting the opioid epidemic for months - working hard to provide resources to those in need.

    Now, the city of Joplin is joining a lawsuit against those companies that manufacture the very opioids she's been fighting.

    Ashley Micklethwaite, One Joplin Director: "The pharmaceutical companies know that the game is up and the medical knows the game is up, so everyone is taking a very close look at how pain medication is prescribed, and how we treat pain now."

    Captain Trevor Duncan with the Joplin Police Department tells us it's certainly a step in the right direction, a much needed step.

    Captain Trevor Duncan, Joplin Police Department: "As a police department we can't solve this problem by ourselves, it's a major problem, that's really going to take a lot of effort from a lot of different people and working together hopefully we can make progress on it."

    As for first responders, METS has actually seen a *decrease* in their use of Narcan for overdose calls.

    But officials with METS say that decrease, can be deceiving, and comes with a word of caution.

    Matt Watts, METS Paramedic/Battalion Chief: "It could be both, either they don't call for Narcan, or they've overdosed on so much medication the Narcan will work briefly and we would need to give a follow up dose, and even the hospital would have to give follow up doses."

    If the lawsuit is ultimately won, Micklethwait says the city must take care with how they handle any money they receive.
    Micklethwaite: "Yes, I think it will make a difference, if that money is used to help our police officers and first responders to bolster how we respond to people who need help."

    Joining the lawsuit comes at no cost to the city.

    The contract only requires the city to pay if the lawsuit is won.
    

    
    

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27. Williams County Joins the Fight Against the Opioid Distributors

    Mar 6, 2018 | WNWO (OH)

    By Keith Conner

    Williams County Prosecuting Attorney and the Williams County Board of Commissioners announces Monday Williams County, Ohio is taking a much-needed step to hold accountable the companies responsible for dumping millions of dollars’ worth of prescription opiates into its community.

    The lawsuit is against five of the largest manufacturers of prescription opioids and their related companies along with the country’s three largest wholesale drug distributors. 
    

    Williams County is working with a consortium of law firms to hold pharmaceutical drug manufacturers and wholesale distributors accountable under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

    The law monitors, identifies and regulates activity. Dozens of counties in Ohio are already part of the lawsuit.
    

    The lawsuit will not cost Williams County government or taxpayers any money unless there is a recovery.

    The law firms pay all expenses to litigate the case.

    As opposed to the tobacco lawsuits, any funds received in this lawsuit would be going directly to Williams County.

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28. Family of opioid-addicted baby sues pharmaceutical companies

    Mar 6, 2018 | Associated Press

    By Staff

    An Illinois family of a baby born addicted to opioids is suing 20 pharmaceutical companies alleging they’re responsible for the mother’s addition to opioids and heroin.

    The lawsuit states that a baby, identified by his initials T.W.B., was born in March 2017 and diagnosed with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, which can cause breathing and feeding problems. The lawsuit says baby T.W.B. spent his first days in “excruciating pain” as he weaned from an opioid addiction inherited from his mother.

    The baby’s grandparents, Deric and Ceonda Rees, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Southern Illinois Wednesday.

    Baby T.W.B. will require years of treatment and counseling to deal with the effects of prenatal exposure,” the lawsuit states. “Baby T.W.B. and his mother are victims of the opioid crisis that has ravaged Illinois, causing immense suffering to those born addicted.”

    The National Institute on Drug Abuse has reported that the number of babies born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome has increased fivefold since 2000.

    According to the lawsuit, the baby’s mother became addicted to opioids after she was prescribed them for a broken ankle and hand as a teenager. Her prescription opiates addiction later became a gateway to a heroin addiction. The lawsuit alleges that the mother has consumed drugs produced and distributed by the 20 companies, such as Dilaudid, Percocet, Oxycodone and Hydrocodone.

    The lawsuit also alleges that the pharmaceutical companies are responsible for “false, negligent and unfair marketing/unlawful diversion of prescription opioids.”

    The family has requested equitable relief and medical monitoring to help identify developmental issues and to pay for treatment.

    Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Purdue Pharma, Allergan and Teva Pharmaceuticals released statements in response to the lawsuit. Three companies didn’t respond for comment and two declined.

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29. Peru To Explore Opioid Lawsuit

    Mar 5, 2018 | Peru Indiana Today (IN)

    By Clint Jones & Rob Fields

    During the Board of Works meeting last Thursday, City Attorney Dustin Kern reported to the Board about the possibility of Peru joining a class action lawsuit against opiate manufacturers and distributors.

    The board heard from Jewel Lee, an attorney from a consortium of law firms who are representing several cities across the country against the distributors and manufacturers of opioids. The aim of the suit is to recover damages due to opioid addiction for cities including costs associated with law enforcement and first responders, possible bad debit for EMS services, as well as funds to help pay for correcting the problems associated with opioid addiction such as treatment, additional law enforcement, and other costs. The law firm would charge a 25% contingency fee with no upfront costs to the city.

    Miami County Systems of Care Governance Coalition System Coordinator Antonia Sawyer, as well as United Way’s Debi Wallick, spoke in favor of the city’s participation in the lawsuit. Sawyer reported that Miami County Systems of Care and Governance has given out over 400 doses of Naloxone (Narcan) in the last four months alone. They both indicated that both city and county resources are strained because of the ongoing opioid addiction crisis.

    The Board of Works approved a motion to allow the city to enter into an engagement agreement with the consortium of law firms for representation of the city for an opioid civil matter.

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Northeast (NY)

30. Amherst hires outside counsel in opioid lawsuit

    Mar 6, 2018 | The Buffalo News (NY)

    By Joseph Popiolkowski

    A New York City-based law firm has been retained to represent the Town of Amherst in its lawsuit against major manufacturers and distributors of opioid pain medication.

    The suit seeking unspecified damages is expected to be filed Tuesday in State Supreme Court accusing the companies of public nuisance, fraud, negligence and unfair business practices in the wake of the opioid epidemic.

    The Town Board on Monday agreed to hire the firm Napoli Shkolnik on a contingency fee basis. Amherst Town Attorney Stanley Sliwa said the firm has "a great deal of experience in handling large-scale pharmaceutical cases" and represents about 20 municipalities in similar suits.

    Police Chief John C. Askey said 14 deaths in 2016 were attributed to opioid-related overdoses in Amherst and "citizens, families and our community in general have suffered greatly as a result of this deadly epidemic."

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31. Town of Amherst Joins Counties in Opioid Lawsuit

    Mar 5, 2018 | WGRZ (NY)

    By Ron Plants

    Amherst officials feel they need to go after pharmaceutical firms, just as local counties have done, in order to actually recover costs for town police and other services to help cope with the opioid epidemic.

    The Town of Amherst is joining other local governments in going after the pharmaceutical industry for harmful effects of the opioid epidemic linked to addictive painkillers.

    The Town Board announced their plans for a lawsuit during a meeting Monday night.

    Erie County actually filed a similar lawsuit back in February of last year. So why did Town leaders feel they needed to go with their own lawsuit? 2 on Your Side went looking for answers.

    Amherst Police Chief John Askey phrased it this way: "We're seeing it every day." Askey says the opioid epidemic and its affects are that pervasive in Western New York's largest town, with the numbers and costs mounting for the town and its services.

    Askey cites the year 2006 when the crisis from addictive prescription pain pills and heroin started building. He says there were two overdose deaths back then. And then ten years later in 2016 there were 14 deaths reported in the town.

    That goes along with increased calls for use of life saving Narcan by police and then a jump in suspected OD related calls to police. Askey adds "The services of the town have been strapped. We're responding to many more overdoses, overdose investigations where individuals have passed away as a result of the drug. And we feel it's important that the town hold the entities accountable that have caused this."

    So that's why the town has struck out on its own to hire a New York City based law firm Napoli Shkolnik to file suit in Erie County State Supreme Court to go after pharmaceutical firms and distributors as well as others who helped suggest and market the pain medication.

    This, again, even after Erie County filed suit in February of last year and many other counties have followed suit. It follows the similar successful government lawsuits against tobacco companies over the smoking health impact back in the late 1990's.

    "From a town perspective we cannot afford to sit back and wait...because what the tobacco litigation proved to people...when you sat back and waited...you weren't treated fairly at the table when they started dividing up the monies," said Town Attorney Stanley Sliwa.

    But with so much government focus on big pharma already from the White House to a town's leaders, we asked Amherst Supervisor Brian Kulpa if this isn't also just a good popular political play. He responded, "We have a specific set of damages caused by opioid abuse in this town."

    This Amherst lawsuit is on a contingency basis with no upfront costs to taxpayers. It will be filed later this week and perhaps consolidated with other such cases, including the one filed by Erie County, to be heard by a judge on Long Island.

    Pharmaceutical firms say they are aware of concerns and are working in collaboration to find solutions. They also defend their products and claim they carry clear warning labels. They also cite the need to treat chronic pain while seeking ways to stem addiction.

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32. Town of Amherst to file lawsuit against opioid pharmaceutical companies

    Mar 6, 2018 | WIVB (NY)

    By Rachele Mongiovi

    The Town of Amherst is suing drug companies as part of the fight against the overdose epidemic.

    Town leaders claim the drug makers have misled their customers.

    “We’re not gonna let you get away with murder. We’re gonna make you responsible, we’re gonna make you pay up the social costs that you’re causing and help us solve this problem,” said Stanley Sliwa, Town of Amherst Supervisor.

    “In law enforcement’s history overdoses were certainly serious events, but now each and every one is being treated like a homicide. Upwards of over a dozen or more deaths and we’re seeing 30 or more applications of Narcan just from police officers and probably 70 some odd calls a year or 80 calls at the very least,” said Chief John Askey, Amherst Police Department.

    Town officials say emergency services are being stretched thin and overdoses are straining resources for the police department, fire department and first responders.

    “It’s a lot of work and effort that a municipality has to put into providing very critical life saving measures, very critical criminal measures, everything that kind of comes along with the epidemic,” said Amherst Town Supervisor Brian Kulpa.

    Monday the town board hired a New York City law firm, Napoli Shkolnik, PLLC, in a lawsuit against opioid pharmaceutical companies. The town is suing manufactures, distributors and key marketing leaders who mislead the public into believing opioids cannot and do not lead to addiction.

    The more than 250 page lawsuit accuses companies of false advertising, fraud and public nuisance.

    “I think it’s helpful, I think anytime people can be held accountable for their actions, it’s helpful. My officers see the families first hand that see a loved one passed away at home and it’s just devastating,” said Askey.

    The lawsuit is expected to be filed this week in the Erie County Clerk’s Office.

    The law firm the town hired will not cost the town anything, the firm will only be paid if the suit is successful.

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33. Amherst joins NYS lawsuit against opioids manufacturers

    Mar 6, 2018 | WBFO (NY)

    By Mike Desmond

    Amherst is joining local governments that are suing opioid manufacturers. The lawsuit argues the legal drugs are not only costing governments money, but lives.

    With no debate and no discussion, the Town Board last night voted to hire Napoli Shkolnik on a contingency basis to sue. There are so many of these suits that they have been consolidated in New York State into a court house in Suffolk County.

    Town Supervisor Brian Kulpa says opioids have cost the town money and lives in battling the drug plague. Kulpa said the town is looking to recover the costs of fighting the overdoses.

    "We're hiring legal counsel to pursue action against opioid suppliers because the town has incurred costs and has  incurred damages as a result of this opioid epidemic, which there's evidence that showed some of those costs and damages could have been avoidable if not for the actions of certain entities," Kulpa said.

    In 2016, 14 town residents died and dozens more were saved with Narcan. Town Police Chief John Askey said overdoses have become very expensive because of the quest to find the dealers, in contrast with the past.

    "Overdoses were certainly serious events, but now each and every one is being treated like a homicide," Askey said. We're looking to track down the individuals that sold the drugs.The resources involved to do that are tremendous. "We're downloading data from telephones, we're questioning witnesses, we're questioning neighbors and we're following up all over Western New York to try to find the people that distributed these drugs."

    Askey said almost everyone in his town has been affected one way or another by the dozens of town residents who have died in the opioid crisis. While not naming any names, the chief said he has seen people die he knew from his years as a Little League coach and many other officers in his department have seen the same from their involvement in youth sports.

    And the toll has kept rising over the last decade, he said.

    "We would see a handful, certainly less than five, overdoses throughout the town and a few Narcan applications, not by the Police Department, years ago. It wasn't something that all officers had," Askey said, "and now we're seeing upwards of over a dozen or more deaths and we're seeing 30 or more applications of Narcan, just from police officers."

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Southwest (OK)

34. Commissioners considering joining opioid litigation

    Mar 6, 2018 | The Clairemore Daily Progress (OK)

    By Cydney Baron

    Whether or not to join in litigation involving opioid manufacturers will continue to be a subject of conversation with the county commissioners for another week.

    This week the commissioners picked up where they left off from the previous week’s meeting in which they heard from two law firms on the issue of opioid litigation.

    Brad Barron, from Barron& Barron law firm of Claremore, introduced Morgan & Morgan, “the country’s largest plaintiff law firm.”

    The commissioners were told by James Young, of Morgan & Morgan, this is a “controversial project” with a “heaping pile of litigation.”

    “As proud as I am to be from this area, there is a significant problem with the abuse of painkillers,” Baron said. “It has affected many counties, many families. It has affected many people who are upstanding responsible people who get addicted to this and it has absolutely caused havoc on their lives and the lives of their loved ones,” said Barron.

    Young told the county commissioners that over the past 15 to 20 years manufacturers have “grossly oversupplied opioids.”

    “They over-shipped drugs to Rogers County,” Young said, adding that this oversupply is in violation of federal controlled substance guidelines.

    He said this is the basis of the litigation.

    Last week the commissioners agreed they wanted to hear the attorney general’s presentation at the Association of County Commissioners of Oklahoma meeting before making a decision.

    This week, though, they said they heard the presentation but still need more time to sort out some details of the litigation before deciding whether or not they participate, and in what capacity.

    Ben Lepak, the county’s attorney, said “Commissioner Delozier and I went to the ACCO board meeting to hear from the attorney general. They’ve brought litigation in Cleveland County, it’s the State of Oklahoma versus some drug manufacturers.”

    “The AG has brought this claim on behalf of the state of Oklahoma, so not necessarily Rogers County individually. I think their suggestion is, at the end of the day when they're taking this to a jury trial or settling it, that any damages the individual counties had incurred would be in play in that settlement or jury verdict,” Lepak said. “So, I'm unclear what, even if we were to join their lawsuit, what they would look like. Would we be joining as an individual plaintiff? They said no. I want to look into this more.”

    The commissioners were told that opioid distribution in Rogers County was among the highest, per capita. This caused them to question if this fact would change their role in the litigation process.

    The commissioners ultimately voted to hold off on a decision until they could get further questions answered by Morgan & Morgan.

    Cleveland County litigation

    A trial date has been set for the Cleveland County lawsuit, May 28, 2019.

    Attorney General Hunter is quoted in this case as saying, “As far as we're concerned, the manufacturers are the bad actors here and they're the ones who started the brainwashing.”

    According to Hunter, about 2,700 Oklahomans have died from opioid overdoses in the past year.

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Broadcast Media Coverage

35. Fox 2 News at 6:00pm

    Mar 5, 2018 | St. Louis, MO

    By KTVI (Fox)

    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346021?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811

    Rough Transcript: a family from illinois who has a baby that was born addicted to opioids is suing 20 pharmaceutical company's. they claimed that companies are responsible for the mother's addiction to opioids and heroin. the belleville news democrat reports that the baby was where less margin diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome which can cause breathing and feeding problems. the babies grandparents filed the lawsuit. >> there is a meeting tonight about opioids at the manchester united methodist church. members from the dea and the national council on alcohol and drug abuse will speak at the event. it's called what you need to know about opioid addiction the event begins at 630.

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36. 7 Action News This Morning on TV20 Detroit

    Mar 6, 2018 | Detroit, MI

    By WMYD (MNT)

    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346028?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811

    Rough Transcript: the opioid epidemic continues to effect the area. >> today organizers are holding a class to learn how to treat an overdose. 7 action news reporter matthew smith is live in detroit with more on a class and why more of these courses are being held. matt? >> malcolm, really, it's out of a need of necessity. we're talking about an addiction, a problem, an epidemic throughout the entire country. it's really hitting us hard here in wayne county. now, whether it's pills, vicodin, heroin, this narcan is a life saving drug that can really revive people. it's nowadays used as a nasal spray. in the past, this has been made available in the state of michigan without a prescription. anyone, including you or are, could purchase this over the 7:07 AMcounter and administer it. that's why it's important today. they're teaching people to use the drug. we had recorded nearly 2,000 deaths in the state of michigan in 2016. almost half of those were in wayne county alone. think of this, 100 people in the state of michigan, if those were the numbers we had, we would actually have 115 prescriptions for opioids, just for those 100 people. more precipitations than people in the state of michigan. that's the numbers we're dealing with. that doesn't include things like heroin, the illegal forms that can be helped by narcan. it's continuing to grow. nationally, we know the president is doing something about this. statewide, citywide, there are lawsuits going on, suing the opioid manufacturers. they're trying to connect the dots and fight the ways that continues to be an epidemic that doesn't have an end in sight at that time. they're planning to have more of these because this event was sold out. they want to have more of these down the line. they're going to try to get the this into every hands. they want to nip this in the bud, so to speak, to have less people dying on the streets in the metro area.

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37. FOX8 News at 6:00A

    Mar 6, 2018 | Greensboro, NC

    By WGHP (Fox)

    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346036?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811

    Rough Transcript: winston-salem is the latest triad city to join a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers. the city council approved joing a lawsuit which has already been filed by several lawfirms last night. according to the journal the suit claims opioid manufacturers and distributors have broken laws designed to keep prescription drugs off the illegal market. so far 24-counties and four cities in north carolina have joined the lawsuit.

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38. 24 Hour News 8's Daybreak at 5:30am

    Mar 6, 2018 | Indianapolis, IN

    By WISH (CW)

    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346045?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811

    Rough Transcript: tippecanoe county is moving forward with a lawsuit against opiod manufacturers and distributers. monday morning, commissioners approved a contract to sue the companies for their role in the area's opioid crisis. several other communities have filed similar lawsuits, including indianapolis. if money is awarded in the lawsuit, 30 percent uld go to the law firm involved. the rest would go toward addiction programs and other opioid related costs in the county.

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39. News4JAX News at 5am

    Mar 6, 2018 | Jacksonville, FL

    By WJXT (WJXT)

    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346054?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811

    Rough Transcript: covering the opioid epidemic. the city of jacksonville is suing some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the united states.it claims -- manufacturers, distributors and executives are all responsible for the city's deadly opioid cris. we have a special section on news4jax dot com.. where you'll find resources available for those struggling with addiction... just go to news4jax dot com slash opioids.

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40. Spectrum News

    Mar 6, 2018 | Buffalo, NY

    By SPNB (Spectrum News)

    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346106?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811

    Rough Transcript: attorneys in amherst are expected to file a lawsuit today against pharmaceutical companies producing opioids. the town supervisor.. and handful of board members.. claim the companies have mislead the public.. into believing that prescribed opioids do not lead to addiction. they're citing a negative impact to quality of life for residents.. and increased costs to taxpayers. the lawsuit calls out manufacturers and distributors of opioid pain medication..

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41. ABC 27 News at Sunrise 6:30am

    Mar 6, 2018 | Tallahassee, FL

    By WTXL (ABC)

    Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/33346110?token=008952b8-4289-482b-8d6a-b87639ff7811

    Rough Transcript: irwin county commission voted unanimously to join a large class action lawsuit against pharmaceutical manufacturers of pain killers. a number of municipalities and counties across georgia and florida are joing in the litigation, saying they want the pharmaceutical manufacturers to pay for the damage the opioid epidemic has caused. irwin county commission attorney warren mixon said irwin county commissioners said joing the lawsuitwould cost nothing, and could lead to some financial gain for their county.
    

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