A veteran New York litigator is taking on opioid makers. They have a history
NEW YORK — The tip came from the doctors. Patients on painkillers were becoming addicted to opioids, even though they said they were taking them as prescribed.
To Paul Hanly, it had the makings of his next big case. On the hunt for patients, his law firm started advertising, and in 2003, it filed its first suits against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin.
Four years later, with Hanly representing 5,000 pain patients, something unusual happened. Purdue settled. It is one of the few instances — maybe the only one, experts say — in which a drug maker agreed to pay individual patients who alleged that it had underplayed the addiction risk of its medications.
A decade later, the smooth, stylish Hanly has again set his sights on opioid manufacturers, this time on behalf of cities and counties in five states. The drug companies, those plaintiffs allege, sought to create a false perception around opioids, seeding a public health and safety crisis that has cost Hanly’s clients hundreds of millions of dollars.
The crisis has paved the way for an escalating fight against painkiller makers. , , , and city governments launch lawsuits against the drug companies, a barrage of cases that the plaintiffs compare to the litigation against the tobacco industry that resulted in a historic $246 billion settlement in 1998. The bulk of the work is
