Why I brought to OHIO this PUBLIC NUISANCE LAWSUIT AGAINST SHERWIN WILLIAMS ET AL LEAD POISONING and now I refuse to coexist with these Jones Day Nazi Democrats, Jews and Blacks state law passed in 2007 doesn’t allow payment of such a judgement

Why I brought to OHIO this PUBLIC NUISANCE LAWSUIT AGAINST SHERWIN WILLIAMS ET AL LEAD POISONING and now I refuse to coexist with these Jones Day Nazi Democrats, Jews and Blacks state law passed in 2007 doesn’t allow payment of such a judgement for a products liability lawsuit Massive opioid judgment in jeopardy as Ohio Supreme Court sides with pharmacies

• Updated: Dec. 10, 2024, 3:32 p.m.

By Jake Zuckerman, jzuckerman@cleveland.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A state Supreme Court ruling Tuesday all but cast a death knell over a $650.9 million judgement two Ohio counties won from chain pharmacy operators for their role in sparking an opioid epidemic.

The Ohio Supreme Court’s isn’t technically a final ruling, but it sides with CVS Health, Walgreens Boot Alliance and Walmart in finding that a state law passed in 2007 doesn’t allow payment of such a judgement for a products liability lawsuit. When the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals acts on the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling, the judges will likely side with the companies in their appeal.

After a trial, a federal jury in 2021 ruled for Lake and Trumbull counties in finding that the chain pharmacy operators helped fuel an opioid crisis by flooding the market with powerfully addictive painkillers. Recklessly lax dispensing practices from the pharmacies prompted diversion and eventual substance abuse at scale, the jury found. The counties drove the lawsuit on a legal theory that the defendants created a “public nuisance” by, in part, cultivating an opioid crisis that overwhelmed the communities.

“No federal judge in history has had to determine the scope and cost of measures necessary to address a small piece of a terrible and tenacious and escalating national tragedy,” U.S. District Judge Dan Polster wrote in an order at the time.

The counties won $650.9 million in the case. They argued the chains “created, perpetuated and maintained” the opioid epidemic by carelessly filling dubious prescriptions for prescribed painkillers, powerfully addictive substances.

Pharmacy operators appealed to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the appeals court asked the Ohio Supreme Court to settle the question of whether Ohio’s products liability law allows for a public nuisance claim about a product like prescribed opioids. On Monday, the justices ruled 5-2 that a 2007 “tort reform” law stops the plaintiffs' legal theory cold, blocking products liability cases that are packaged as public nuisance claims.

“We recognize that the opioid crisis has touched the lives of people in every corner of Ohio,” the justices wrote in an opinion authored by Justice Joe Deters.

“The devastation experienced by these private citizens, individually and collectively, undoubtedly has far-reaching consequences for their communities and for the State as a whole. Creating a solution to this crisis out of whole cloth is, however, beyond this court’s authority. We must yield to the branch of government with the constitutional authority to weigh policy considerations and craft an appropriate remedy. And the General Assembly has spoken, plainly and unambiguously: a public-nuisance claim seeking equitable relief is not that remedy.”

Peter Weinberger of Cleveland-based Spangenberg Shibley & Liber served as a co-liason counsel on behalf of the counties. He said the counties can still pursue other claims, like racketeering, but this would require a new trial. The Supreme Court’s ruling, however, unmistakably narrows their path forward.

“This ruling will have a devastating impact on communities and their ability to police corporate misconduct,” he said. “We have used public nuisance claims across the country to obtain nearly $60 billion in opioid settlements, including nearly $1 billion in Ohio alone, and the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling undermines the very legal basis that drove this result.”

Two Democratic justices - Melody Stewart and Mike Donnelly, both of whom lost election and will step down at year’s end - dissented in part. They emphasized that products liability cases seek extra, compensatory damages, which the plaintiffs here did not. In other words, the plaintiffs weren’t seeking money for personal enrichment but to reimburse government for health care, law enforcement and other costs of abating the public nuisance of a runaway drug addiction problem brought on in part by negligent dispensing practices.

Therefore, they wrote, the plaintiffs filed a public nuisance lawsuit and not a products lawsuit, so the judgement should stand.

“For example, Cuyahoga County used the abatement award to construct and fund various treatment facilities, and other counties have used the award to create or expand various drug treatment programs and fund harm-reduction strategies, including safe needle exchanges, naloxone, drug courts, peer counseling, and more,” they wrote. “These programs are designed to address both the current and long-term effects of the opioid epidemic, yet no one would argue that the programs are ‘compensating’ the Counties. Instead, the equitable relief allows the local governments to fulfill their duty to protect public health through the abatement of a public nuisance.”

Walgreens spokesman Marty Maloney said in a statement the company is pleased with the ruling, “which allows us to put this litigation behind us so we can continue focusing on the health and wellbeing of our patients, customers, and team members in northern Ohio and across the country.” A CVS Health spokeswoman said the company is “pleased to have prevailed.”

Hannah Henderson, a WalMart spokeswoman, said the company is proud of its pharmacists efforts to help patients amid a “tangled web” of state and federal rules.

“The Ohio Supreme Court is the latest court to correctly reject plaintiff-lawyers’ efforts to radically expand public nuisance law to sue companies over lawful products that are already regulated,” she said.

The trial was closely monitored as a bellwether case, after years in which 50,000 to 80,000 Americans died of opioid-involved overdoses every year. Opioid overdoses have killed about 20,000 Ohioans since 2018. Ohio, according to the CDC, typically falls among the states with the highest fatal overdose rates in the nation.

By the end of 2022, the three companies agreed to pay about $13.8 billion to resolve thousands of lawsuits brought by state, local and tribal governments who carried the staggering macroeconomic costs of addiction.

Dennis Cauchon, who runs a nonprofit, Harm Reduction Ohio, distributing the opioid overdose reversal agent naloxone, said fortunately there’s plenty of money available from current opioid settlements to buy the life-or-death difference makers of naloxone kits. But there are still unmet needs.

For instance, he said behind many fatal overdoses of parents are children in need of guardianship. They’re often grandparents on fixed incomes, who on top of mourning a loved one must shoulder costs of raising a child.

“It’s a whole demographic in Ohio that has been ignored, these heroic grandparents,” he said. “And these kids are coming of age now.”

Stories by Jake Zuckerman

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Jake Zuckerman covers state politics and policy for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.

https://www.cleveland.com/open/2024/12/massive-opioid-settlement-in-jeopardy-as-ohio-supreme-court-sides-with-pharmacies.html