[ad_1]
Photo:
Cloe Poisson/Zuma Press
Politicians and trial lawyers are sticking up companies across the pharmaceutical supply chain like Bonnie and Clyde. Riding shotgun is federal Judge
Dan Aaron Polster,
who on Wednesday ordered CVS,
Walgreens
and
Walmart
to pay $650 million to two Ohio counties to remedy opioid abuse. Now on to the next raid.
Judge Polster is overseeing some 3,000 opioid lawsuits by municipalities and their trial-lawyer friends against drug manufacturers, distributors and retailers. His explicit goal is to push the companies into cutting a big check to do “something meaningful to abate the crisis,” as he said in a 2018 hearing. “We don’t need a lot of briefs and we don’t need trials.”
To expedite a settlement, he called for a bellwether trial against the three large pharmacy chains to litigate claims by the two counties. They say the pharmacies should have known that opioids they dispensed would be abused, no matter that state medical and pharmacy boards have threatened to discipline pharmacists who refuse to fill legal prescriptions.
As we’vewritten, Judge Polster repeatedly bent the federal rules of civil procedure and evidence to assist the trial lawyers. A jury in November held the pharmacies liable for creating a public nuisance, and the judge is now ordering them to pay what amounts to about $1,500 per person in each county.
While this is less than the $2 billion the counties sought, plaintiffs always shoot for the stars and hope to land on the moon. In this case they made it to Mars. If defendants are required to pay a similar amount in all 3,000 or so other opioid cases, they could be on the hook for more than $1 trillion. Pharmacies could appeal the verdict, but Judge Polster is betting they’ll choose to cut smaller checks to settle the other cases, as some companies have done.
Rite
Aid this summer paid $10.5 million to settle lawsuits by three counties in the multi-district litigation.
Johnson & Johnson
and three distributors last summer agreed to pay $26 billion to settle thousands of others. The lawsuits transfer wealth from private business to governments and the trial bar, and the costs will invariably be passed onto customers.
Politicians howl about high drug prices. How about looking in the mirror?
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
[ad_2]
Source link
(This article is generated through the syndicated feeds, Financetin doesn’t own any part of this article)
