39 State Attorney Generals Vie With Thousands Of Cities Over How To Resolve Settlements In Massive Opioid Lawsuit
A proposal to allow all 34,000 jurisdictions to vote on settlement offers is being contested now at the state level. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in Cleveland before the federal judge who is overseeing the cases. News on the opioid crisis comes from Minnesota, as well.
The New York Times:
States Clash With Cities Over Potential Opioids Settlement Payouts
Over the last 18 months, progress toward a settlement in the massive federal opioid litigation has stalled, even as the costs of the crisis continue to mount. Now, an inventive plan to jump-start negotiations, recently put forth by lawyers for the nearly 2,000 cities and counties that have brought cases, is facing attacks from an unlikely source. Pushback that could torpedo it is coming less from the corporate defendants than from the localities’ uneasy allies: the states. (Hoffman, 8/5)
Pioneer Press:
Minnesota Lawsuit Takes Aim At Sackler Family’s Alleged Role In Opioid Crisis
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison says the owners of the pharmaceutical company at the root of the opioid crisis were “motivated not by human dignity or the value of human life, but by unlimited greed.” That’s the argument at the heart of an updated lawsuit Minnesota has brought against Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia are suing the pharmaceutical company and its owners for allegedly lying about the addictive nature of powerful painkillers that caused a national addiction epidemic. (Magan, 8/5)
