Baton Rouge, which has joined other jurisdictions in suing opioid manufacturers and distributors, is opting out of a tentative settlement agreement reached by four state attorneys general Monday with five major pharmaceutical companies that distribute and manufacture opiates.
Under the agreement, four companies—including McKesson, Cardinal Health, Amerisource Bergen, and Johnson & Johnson—would pay $22 billion in cash over 18 years to settle the lawsuit. Meanwhile, over the next decade, Teva—the Israel-based manufacturer of generic drugs—would cough up $250 million and also provide addiction treatment drugs it values at $23 billion. Additionally, the companies would provide about $3 billion in distribution services for a decade.
But Baton Rouge—like many of the cities and counties that began participating in opioid lawsuits within the past couple of years—is pushing for more money to be paid out in a shorter time frame.
“This is a public health crisis that needs large dollars today to fight the epidemic,” says Burton LeBlanc, an attorney with Dallas-based Baron & Budd, hired to represent Baton Rouge in its lawsuit against opioid distributors. “This settlement does not front-load any of the money, and they need to pay their fair share sooner—not 18 years from now.”
Moreover, says LeBlanc, the agreement was compiled by attorneys general who hadn’t previously sued the pharmaceutical companies. Indeed, the states began filing their opioid lawsuits relatively recently, but those by local governments were first filed years ago (Baton Rouge’s was filed in January 2018).
There also hasn’t been any sort of agreement on allocation of the settlement dollars among states, cities, and counties, while many of those stakeholders have not accepted the settlement.
“If they improve the agreement, that’s one thing,” says LeBlanc, “but right now, there’s a lot to be desired.”
The pitch comes one day after the three major drug distributors and Teva reached a $260 million deal with two Ohio counties—a combination of cash payouts and donations of addiction treatments—which legal experts say could become a model for settlement of thousands of similar cases brought in an attempt to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable for the national opioid epidemic.
LeBlanc agrees, saying Baton Rouge would “definitely be a beneficiary of such a structure.”
