Mayor Sharon Weston Broome says she supports having Baton Rouge join a lawsuit against major drug distributors, following the lead of dozens of municipalities and states across the country in litigating the opioid epidemic.
Parish Attorney Lea Anne Batson added a measure to the Metro Council’s agenda several weeks ago that would have allowed the city-parish to contract the law firm Baron & Budd to file the lawsuit. But the council balked, largely because they were not included in the early discussions to craft the proposal and put it on the agenda. Councilman Chandler Loupe, with the backing of the rest of the council, deleted the item from the agenda in September.
Now, Broome and her top staffers say they plan to meet with several law firms and move forward with the lawsuit. The mayor plans to bring the measure back before the Metro Council, but is not offering a timeline.
“We plan to move forward like many other cities and parishes throughout the country have done,” Broome says.
Dozens of cities, parishes, counties and states have filed lawsuits against some of the largest drug manufacturers in the country, a trend that has ramped up in recent years. Others, including the initial proposal in Baton Rouge, have targeted the three largest drug distributors—AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp.
The three companies have denied wrongdoing and a spokeswoman for AmerisourceBergen previously told Daily Report it plans to “vigorously” fight the suit if it’s filed.
It’s unclear whether the Metro Council will sign off on the idea, as several council members say they haven’t learned enough about it. At least one—councilman Buddy Amoroso—rejects the lawsuit on the merits, calling it a form of lawsuit abuse.
“To me it was not a process issue,” Amoroso says. “I’m just opposed to that type of lawsuit.”
In recent months, several parishes in Louisiana have filed suits against major drug companies. The Louisiana Department of Health—a major state agency—also is suing drug manufacturers, alleging fraudulent marketing of opioids that escalated the public health crisis here.
The trend, and the legal theories behind the suits, are analogous to the tobacco litigation of the late 1990s, says University of Kentucky law professor Dan Ausness, who is studying the litigation.
But Ausness also warned the opioid lawsuits may be more difficult for cities and states to win, even if the drug companies engaged in fraught practices. Much like the tobacco lawsuits, their best bet is to reach a settlement with the drug companies. “It’s not a slam dunk,” he says.
Private individuals have been bringing lawsuits against drug companies for at least two decades, Ausness found, often with little success. The trend of governmental entities filing suits began relatively recently, and he is unaware of any that have been resolved, either by settlement or litigation.
However, it is possible drug distributors could be more liable than the manufacturers in the opioid crisis, given they had more control over where the drugs went, Ausness says. They’re also one step closed to users, pharmacists and doctors than manufacturers are.
—Sam Karlin
