County may sue drug firms over opioid crisis
Allegheny County is about to ask law firms for proposals to sue the pharmaceutical giants widely blamed for setting off the current opioid crisis, the county solicitor told council members at a meeting late Wednesday.
The county plans to issue on Friday a request for qualifications from large “toxic tort” firms that would like to review the county’s legal options, add up the county’s damages from opioids including heroin, and sue.
“There’s a very good chance we would authorize them to go ahead with litigation,” said county Solicitor Andrew Szefi. “The point of this is not just to
get money for the county. ... You want to have talks about solutions and how you would effectuate change in the industry to remediate the issue. Not just, ‘Here’s some money, go away.’”
The chosen firm would bear the costs and be paid on a contingency basis, he said, so there would be no cost to taxpayers.
Lame-duck Councilman Ed Kress, R-Shaler, passed around the one-paragraph letter from two physicians, penned in 1980, that pharmaceutical companies long used to convince doctors that opioids like OxyContin were not addictive. Now, experts say the surging use of heroin and fentanyl, often by people who became addicted to prescription opioids, drives the overdose surge that took 650 lives in the county last year.
“When you think about how many words caused all these damages and all of these deaths, it’s unbelievable,” Mr. Kress fumed.
Council colleague Cindy Kirk said her work as a nurse at UPMC Presbyterian has shown her that the opioids are necessary. “But what about the people who actually need the pain medication?” she asked. “I’d hate to not have the tools to help the people who require it.”
After about 45 minutes of debate, the county council Health and Human Services Committee voted to send a motion to council asking the solicitor to consider a lawsuit, with a neutral recommendation. Mr. Szefi said the council committee’s neutrality would not prevent his office from proceeding this week to ask law firms for proposals.
He said the firms’ proposals would be due at the end of January, after which the county will evaluate them and choose a firm. It’s too soon to say when a lawsuit might be filed or how much the county might claim in damages from the epidemic, he said.
He said the county will explore whether costs have risen in the courts, jail and human services departments because of the opioid problem.
The county’s fragmentation — 130 municipal governments and 47 designated emergency medicine providers — means that one central authority needs to step up and sue, Mr. Kress has argued. Mr. Szefi, though, said that the county will likely be able to sue to recover only its own costs, not those of municipalities.
The number of lawsuits by states and counties against opioid manufacturers and distributors is rising. In October, Beaver County became the first in this region, seeking recompense for the costs of the painkiller epidemic from Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions, Allergan, Actavis, Watson Pharmaceuticals, McKesson, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, of five some allied of physicians. those subsidiaries firms and
Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office is one of the leaders in a 41-state investigation of the opioid industry. Last week at a forum about opioids in Mt. Lebanon, he pledged to “hold those accountable who have fueled this epidemic,” though he declined to say whether he thinks criminal charges should be brought. “I think the pharmaceutical companies have to play a role in the answer to this crisis,” he said. Council’s motion cites a lawsuit by Nassau County, N.Y., which alleges that the pharmaceutical companies knew about the addictive nature of opioids for years, and yet marketed them broadly. It quotes estimates that opioid abuse is burdening the nation’s health and social systems to the tune of $55 billion each year. And it indicates that the industry is settling cases by states and counties for millions of dollars.