About three weeks ago, (on November 7) I posted a story about a decision in California dismissing a claim for public nuisance against several opioid manufacturers and distributors. Two days after that, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma announced a decision reversing a trial court's judgment against opioid manufacturers in a similar case. The case is State ex rel. Hunter v. Johnson and Johnson and you can find it here.
These two decisions resulted in an article in the NY Times with the very descriptive title "The Core Legal Strategy Against Opioid Companies May Be Faltering." You can read it here.
Yet, a couple of weeks later a jury in Ohio found that three retail pharmacy chains created a public nuisance by recklessly distributing vast amounts of pain pills in two Ohio counties. See here. I have no doubt this verdict will be appealed.
Evidently, the litigation over the opioid crisis is a big deal. There are thousands of pending cases and how each is decided ultimately will influence how the issue is addressed in other jurisdictions.
If we go by history, the use of public nuisance as a way to address social problems created by distribution of products has not been successful. The vast majority of cases that attempted it failed, including cases against tobacco companies, lead paint manufacturers and gun manufacturers and distributors. For this reason, the cases against opioid manufacturers are going to be difficult to win. But it is possible courts will change their view on this. I am very interested in following this story which will not go away any time soon.
Here is a short PBS News report that summarizes many of the issues involved in the current litigation. (While you are at it, if you are interested, you can find many other videos on the topic of the opioid crisis on YouTube.)
More coverage on the verdict against the pharmacy chains here: AboutLawsuits.com, ABA Journal, NPR, The Guardian, and Courthouse News.
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