Judge to hear opioid suits

FEDERAL COURTS

A judicial panel picked Cleveland over Columbus to hear the civil litigation against more than a dozen pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors accused of fueling the nation’s opioid crisis.

Plaintiffs in the 66 lawsuits filed around the country against the drug companies had asked that they be heard in Columbus by U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr., chief of the Southern District of Ohio. The suits include more than a dozen filed by southern Ohio counties.

Dublin-based Cardinal Health, one of the defendants, preferred the federal court for the southern West Virginia district.

That disagreement probably prompted the panel to pick Cleveland, observers said.

The cases will be assigned to U.S. District Judge Dan A. Polster in the Northern District of Ohio. Together, the lawsuits are called multidistrict litigation, or MDL, because they were filed in district courts around the country. The idea is that after a few test cases are resolved, the remaining plaintiffs might decide to settle, withdraw their cases or continue to trial.

“He’s a great judge who’s known for moving cases along efficiently and fairly,” Sargus said of Polster.

Sargus wrapped up an MDL in February 2017 when DuPont agreed to pay $671 million to settle 3,500 suits over C8 contamination from its plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia.

In October, Sargus ordered the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration not to destroy information from its database that tracks the transfer of drugs such as OxyContin, Percocet and Dilaudid.

Vinton County officials contend that enough opioids were dispensed in their rural county of 13,000 that every man, woman and child could have received 105 doses.

Plaintiffs said the number of deaths due to unintentional drug poisonings increased 642 percent from 2000 to 2015, citing Ohio Department of Health statistics. Last year, there were 4,050.

Plaintiffs said manufacturers and distributors should have recognized when an inordinate amount of drugs were being ordered by doctors in a community.

Three drug distributors with operations in central Ohio are defendants: Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. and McKesson Corp. The three together control 85 percent of the market for prescription opioids.

Cardinal Health, the only one of those three distributors willing to comment, issued this statement: “We operate as part of a multifaceted and highly regulated health-care system ... and believe everyone in that chain, including us, must do their part, which is ultimately why we believe these copycat lawsuits filed against us are misguided and do nothing to stem the crisis.”