Your Guide To The Massive (And Massively Complex) Opioid Litigation
In less than a week, a landmark battle over who bears responsibility for the U.S. opioid crisis will begin in federal court.
The case involves thousands of plaintiffs at virtually every level of government and defendants from every link in the chain of opioid drug production — from major multinational corporations such as Johnson & Johnson and CVS, right down to individual doctors. And on Oct. 21, the first trial is set to kick off before a judge in the Northern District of Ohio.
And with the costs of the crisis estimated at tens of billions of dollars and with more than 200,000 overdose deaths since the late 1990s, the stakes are immense — even for people who have never heard of this case. What happens with it will largely determine how much money cities and counties nationwide will have to fight the devastating effects of opioid abuse and when they'll get it.
But the case is also intensely complicated. So let's begin with the basics.
How will a case this big work, and why is it in Ohio?
As you can imagine, it's ridiculously complicated to have a slew of different opioid-related lawsuits all playing out in different U.S. courts.
So a judicial panel decided to streamline things by putting the more than 2,000 pending lawsuits under the watchful eye of a single federal judge who will be responsible for guiding pretrial motions and keeping everyone on the same page. The consolidated lawsuit is called the National Prescription Opiate Litigation.
And the panel chose the Northern District of Ohio for several reasons: It's geographically convenient for the defendants, the state has been hard hit by opioid overdoses and, who will oversee. Once all the pretrial wrangling ends, the various cases will then be sent back to their original courts, which are responsible for conducting those trials — at least in theory.
