Defendants in the nation’s largest opioid litigation might be reconsidering their odds. If they were confident, they might not have asked for the removal of the federal judge tasked with overseeing thousands of consolidated lawsuits seeking to recover damages from drug makers and distributors for their role in perpetuating the nation’s ongoing opioid crisis.
That, however, is exactly what happened last month when household names like CVS ...
continue reading...The judge overseeing the MDL that seeks to hold drug manufacturers and distributors responsible for their roles in the nation’s ongoing opioid abuse epidemic has scheduled the first cases in the litigation for trial. If all goes to plan, some very serious questions might start seeing answers beginning in March of next year.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Polster had, to this point, sought ...
continue reading...
“My objective is to do something meaningful to abate this crisis and to do it in 2018.” These are the words that US District Judge Dan Polster used to open a multi-district litigation brought by municipalities from around the country against the Big Pharma companies they believe have exacerbated the nation’s opioid overdose and addiction crisis.
His goal has been for the parties to reach ...
continue reading...
The opioid crisis in America is one of the most complicated public health issues ever to grip the nation. Whether it’s a discussion of the root causes of the epidemic and the roles of the corporations who make the drugs or the culture of prescription dependency that led the medical community to dole the pills out in such abundance in the first place, there is no simple answer to the ...
A former judge and now private practice attorney was openly laughed at during an MDL panel in Illinois when she suggested they should give a nation’s worth of opioid cases to a judge who had never presided over a national litigation.
Ann Callis, formerly a chief judge in Madison County, Illinois and now practicing law privately as an attorney addressed the panel in late November and requested that every opioid-related lawsuit be transferred under U.S. District Judge Staci Yandle. The exchange ...
continue reading...
