Opioid Lawsuit Could Follow Footsteps of Tobacco Settlement
Summit County is pursuing legal action against pharmaceutical companies following the declaration of a state of emergency due to the opioid epidemic.
Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro announced the state of emergency in her State of County speech in October.
The Summit County state of emergency was declared just one day before President Trump declared the opioid crisis a National Public Health Emergency.
Ohio is the nation’s leader in deaths due to opioids with 3,130 people dying from overdose in 2015 and 4,050 dying from overdose in 2016.
Nationwide the crisis continues to grow with nearly 62,000 overdose deaths in last year alone.
In a city council meeting last month the city of Stow passed an ordinance to join Akron, Barberton and Cuyahoga Falls in conjunction with Summit County in filing a class action lawsuit against the pharmaceutical companies and health distributors that are responsible for this crisis.
Hudson is the only city in Summit County that has officially voted not to be a part of the lawsuit.
“This lawsuit will not be easy and it will not be quick, but I do believe it is necessary and most importantly I believe it will be impactful to our community,” Stow Law Director Amber Zibritosky said.
Stow’s ordinance authorized the hiring of Motley Rice LLC, Nealon & Associates P.C., Raffelli & Prazak, Attorneys at Law and Brennan Manna & Diamond LLC for purposed of providing legal counsel.
The hiring of these law firms is on a contingency basis and therefore will not cost the city any money out of pocket.
Motely Rice’s opioid litigation division is led by Linda Singer. Singer is representing Alaska, Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina and several other cities and counties including Summit County.
Singer was unavailable for comment.
The names of which pharmaceutical companies and health distributors Summit County plans to go after has not been disclosed. However, in a separate lawsuit Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is suing five pharmaceutical companies on behalf of Ohio. Those companies are Purdue Pharma, Cephalon Inc., Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., Endo Health Solutions Inc. and Actavis.
DeWine is not alone in suing pharmaceutical companies. Attorney generals in Mississppi, Missouri, New Jersey and West Virginia have also filed lawsuit against companies they believe are responsible for the opioid epidemic.
“We’re trying to hold the companies and distributors that have really reaped the profits from this crisis accountable. [The opioid lawsuit is] very similar to what they did in 1998 with the tobacco industry so we’re hoping for a similar result,” Zibritosky said.
According to the Public Health Law Center, “The Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) is an accord reached in November 1998 between the State Attorneys General of 46 states, five U.S. territories, the District of Columbia and the five largest tobacco companies in America concerning the advertising, marketing and promotion of tobacco products.”
Among other requirements, the settlement authorized the tobacco industry to pay settling states $10 million annually for the indefinite future, forbid participating cigarette manufacturers from directly targeting youth and bans or restricts cartoons, transit advertising, and most forms of outdoor advertising.
“The tobacco lawsuit and national settlement forced the tobacco companies to stop marketing their deadly product to minors. If the opioid lawsuit could bring about such a monumental change as well I would consider that a tremendous victory,” Tobacco Counsel Carol Mosholder said.
Since the tobacco settlement decision is 1998 Ohio has received $5,781,815,200.45 in payouts.
According to Mosholer Ohio securitized the tobacco settlement money in October of 2007, thus the annual tobacco payments go to the bondholders.
Ex addict Thomas Magliocco has been sober for over 11 years and frequently attends Alcoholic Anonymous meetings. However, he has seen the premise of AA meetings change in the last five years.
“I’m sitting now among people whose average age it seems is in their twenties, in their teens, and it has everything to do with opioid addiction,” Magliocco said.
“The only requirement for membership in this 12 step program is the desire to stop and they stopped putting this emphasis on alcohol and excluding others because of this epidemic.”
Although Magliocco’s choice of drug was cocaine and he did not begin his addiction with prescription pills, he says he did do opioids socially and has experience with opioid users.
“Early in sobriety I lived with two opioid users and every other week there was a broken hand or a broken collar bone and a lot of it was self-induced, knowing that they can go to these hospitals and get these pain pills,” Magliocco said.
When discussing the pharmaceutical companies responsibilities Magliocco said, “I think the responsibility lies on everyone, pharmaceuticals, doctors, patients…”
Magliocco said the switch from paper prescriptions to digital has allowed doctors to keep better track of patients drug histories. However, he also said he knows it takes only a few days to become addicted to prescription pain pills.
If Summit County is victorious in their lawsuit, the settlement money would be used for opioid treatment and recovery.
Magliocco added that he thinks, “we can count on more states following Ohio’s footsteps if they are successful.”
Help for people struggling with opioid addiction in Ohio
1-877-913-1338
(330) 644-4095
(440) 703-0940
Regional Center for Opiate Recovery
(330) 837-9411
Is Summit County’s opioid lawsuit the next big tobacco settlement? #JMCRPPhttps://t.co/zw9h0pwMd7
— Paige Brown (@pbrownKent) December 5, 2017
Summit County to sue pharmaceutical companies and health distributors they believe are responsible for the opioid crisis #JMCRPP https://t.co/zw9h0pwMd7
— Paige Brown (@pbrownKent) December 5, 2017
