Managing partner Harry Nelson gave his expert analysis regarding an MDL (multidistrict litigation) reflecting one of the nation’s high-profile controversies in recent years in the Ohio federal court.
From the article:
Various local governments are alleging that opiate manufacturers and distributors created a public health crisis by pushing wildly addictive drugs into patients’ hands, leading millions of patients and nonpatients to develop preventable addictions to the opiates codeine and morphine and the newer lab creations hydrocodone, oxycodone, fentanyl and methadone.
The ensuing crisis has strained public budgets by demanding huge expenditures related to health care, child safety and law enforcement, the government plaintiffs allege.
In November, a judge shot down drug companies’ bid to block Ohio local governments with bellwether cases from recovering damages at trial. U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster denied drugmakers’ motion, which had accused Ohio cities and counties of disregarding an April case management order requiring the disclosure of prescriptions that the governments believe were medically unnecessary or medically inappropriate. In their early-November motion, the drugmakers insisted that identification of specific prescriptions is “critically important” to their defense.
…the case is still in its relative infancy, according to Harry Nelson of Nelson Hardiman LLP, a health care lawyer who says he has been consulted by states on the litigation.
“Now we’re at a point when we’re going to be seeing a lot of depositions and document reviews,” Nelson said. “The coming year is going to be [a] heavy discovery year. Discovery in a case like this … could easily be a multiyear process.”
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