What Happened In The MassTorts World Last Week? 2020-Mar-02

On Friday, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter voluntarily dismissed the opioid lawsuit against three distributors that have been moved to federal court and will refile new lawsuits in state court against each company individually.

Opioids are on the market for ages and have been used basically for pain relief for post-surgical pain, cancer-related pain, chronic or persistent pain. Opioids when used in proper dosage and along with a combination of other pain treatments, work in relieving pain successfully, unless there is a misuse or abuse of the drug.

Companies manufacturing opioids convinced the medical community that these medications were not addictive and were purely beneficial. This belief raised the number of prescriptions and sales unwarrantedly, resulting in a mass misuse of these drugs, to the extent that this was identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a public issue and named it an opioid crisis.

The companies McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen were sued in mid-January for allegedly fueling the opioid crisis in the state by ignoring suspicious orders of painkillers. 

The notice came three weeks after the case was removed from Cleveland County District Court to the Oklahoma federal court.

In recent months, Oklahoma reaped some massive settlements, beginning with Purdue Pharma LP and Teva Pharmaceuticals, which made a settlement of $270 million and $85 million, respectively, followed by a $572 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson by an Oklahoma state judge, which was later cut to $465 million. Lastly, Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc. made an $8.75 million out-of-court deal with the state to avoid legal action.

The U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers, presiding over the coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings of federal 3M military earplugs lawsuits, indicated that the first “bellwether” trial is scheduled for April 2021. The trial will help gauge how juries respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation.

According to the pretrial order issued on February 11, the initial bellwether selection process will be completed by February 25, which will result in a pool of 20 earplug cases and six alternates. The first trial will be held with Daubert and dispositive motions due in January 2021. The parties will also be allowed to brief the consolidation issue before a final decision is made.

The Combat Arms Earplugs Version 2 (CAEv2) was manufactured by Aearo Technologies, Inc. prior to being taken over by 3M in 2008. The dual-ended 3M CAEv2 combat earplugs served as a standard form of military hearing protection in foreign conflicts for more than a decade, from 2002 to 2016. The 3M military earplugs are made of green and yellow with a double-ended design. The green end is inserted in order to block all sound, and the insertion of the yellow end reduces the sound of gunfire and explosives but still allowed the service personnel to be part of a conversation. According to several lawsuits filed, the defective military earplugs cause two primary medical issues, tinnitus and hearing loss, mostly among veterans in the Navy and Air Force. The product was discontinued in 2015.

Currently, more than 2,800 product liability claims are pending in the federal court system against 3M Company consolidated under MDL No. 2885 (In Re: 3M Combat Arms Earplug Litigation) in the Northern District of Florida. Each lawsuit alleges veterans have been left with hearing loss or tinnitus due to defective earplugs distributed by the U.S. armed forces to all service members between about 2003 and 2015.

McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., and AmerisourceBergen Corp. have renewed a settlement by offering 1 billion in legal fees to the states, cities, and counties who have sued them over the misguiding distribution of highly addictive painkillers that contain opioids.

The settlement will be useful for the treatment of people affected by the opioid crisis and can be used for social service as well. The news resulted in a rise of the share prices of the three companies by 1.5%.

Last week McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., and AmerisourceBergen Corp. offered to pay $18 billion to twenty-one U.S. states who alleged the distributors over mishandling of opioids, but they rejected the offer by stating that the settlement is less as compared to the damage caused due to the opioid crisis throughout the nation.

Opioids are on the market for ages and have been used basically for pain relief for post-surgical pain, cancer-related pain, chronic or persistent pain. Opioids when used in proper dosage and along with a combination of other pain treatments, work in relieving pain successfully, unless there is a misuse or abuse of the drug.

Companies manufacturing opioids convinced the medical community that these medications were not addictive and were purely beneficial. This belief raised the number of prescriptions and sales unwarrantedly, resulting in a mass misuse of these drugs, to the extent that this was identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a public issue and named it an opioid crisis.

More than 400,000 people have died in the U.S. due to opioid overdose in the last two decades.

One of the largest opioid distributors, Mallinckrodt, has agreed to pay  $1.6 billion as a settlement for the thousands of lawsuits faced by it over the opioid crisis.

As per the proposed agreement, plaintiffs would receive warrants for 20 percent of the company’s outstanding shares. Mallinckrodt will pay the money of the settlement to a trust for eight years and enter its generic business into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The settlement will clear all the opioid claims against the company.

The agreement has got approval by 47 states and territory attorneys general, but still, thousands of municipalities who sued the manufacturers over the opioid crisis are yet to reach the agreement. The settlement came after more than 20 attorneys signed a letter rejecting an $18 billion settlement deal proposed by three of the nation’s biggest opioid distributors.

The agreement can help in the settlement with several other companies as Mallinckrodt is the first company to reach a tentative global agreement in the Cleaveland case. It can also lead to global settlements of all claims, as informed by U.S. District Judge Dan A. Polster, who is overseeing the Cleveland case.

Opioids are on the market for ages and have been used basically for pain relief for post-surgical pain, cancer-related pain, chronic or persistent pain. Opioids when used in proper dosage and along with a combination of other pain treatments, work in relieving pain successfully, unless there is a misuse or abuse of the drug.

Companies manufacturing opioids convinced the medical community that these medications were not addictive and were purely beneficial. This belief raised the number of prescriptions and sales unwarrantedly, resulting in a mass misuse of these drugs, to the extent that this was identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a public issue and named it an opioid crisis.

The U.S. District Judge Robin L. Rosenberg, presiding over all federal Zantac lawsuits, appointed two small groups of attorneys to serve in leadership roles.

Zantac (ranitidine hydrochloride) is an antacid and an H2 (histamine-2) receptor blocker used for treating and preventing ulcers in the duodenum, stomach, and intestines. It is also used for treating erosive esophagitis, heartburn, gastroesophageal reflux disease-GERD, Zollinger-Ellison syndrome. In 1983, Glaxo Holdings Ltd, a company which is a part of GlaxoSmithKline PLC, received approval from the FDA to sell Zantac in the U.S. However, owing to patent expiry in 1987 in the United States, Glaxo had to face stiff competition by the generic alternatives launched immediately by competitors. Since 2017, the OTC version of Zantac was marketed by Sanofi in the United States and Canada. In 2004, Pfizer gained FDA approval to sell the Zantac OTC in the United States.

According to the pretrial order issued on February 24, Judge Rosenberg appointed four attorneys to an Initial Census Team and four other attorneys to a Practices and Procedures Team.

The Initial Census Team will assist to outline the process for surveying the number of filed Zantac claims and unfiled cases that attorneys nationwide are continuing to investigate. This will help the Court gauge the size of the litigation and the best way to manage the pretrial proceedings.

The duties of the Practices and Procedures Team, as described in a pretrial order issued on February 20, include the creation of an early dialog regarding the content and timing of procedural orders that may be helpful in the Zantac litigation.

An initial status conference with the presiding judge is scheduled for March 20, during which the appointed attorneys will meet with the Court for the first time. A larger group of Zantac injury attorneys will be appointed around the time of this conference, who will take certain actions that benefit all plaintiffs and argue motions before the Court.

On Wednesday, Bayer Chairman Werner Wenning notified that he is about to step down from his designation in April. He played a prominent role in the $63 billion deal of taking over Monsanto, which has resulted in the company fighting costly lawsuits.

Wenning became CEO in 2002 when the company was facing a crisis. During his stint as CEO, he clinched major takeovers. He stepped down from the CEO role after eight years by appointing a company outsider Marijn Dekkers in 2010 and became chairman two years later.

Bayer's share prices are going down rigorously since August 2018 when the company lost the first lawsuit claiming the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. 73-year-old Wenning said that the company is progressing effectively in terms of legal proceedings of the lawsuits faced by it. Norbert Winkeljohann will succeed Wenning after the annual shareholders’ meeting on April 28. Norbert has been a member of Bayer’s supervisory board since 2018.

IARC, considered to be the apex in the field of cancer research, classified glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen.” According to IARC, Roundup is made up of other ingredients that are toxic in themselves, and are also known to increase the toxicity of glyphosate. Monsanto has known this for many years but still refuses to study the link between cancer and Roundup.

Monsanto has a brief history of legal troubles and Glyphosate is just another herbicide of the company to attract lawsuits. Plaintiffs across the U.S. have filed numerous lawsuits. A plaintiff from one of the Roundup lawsuits claims that she worked as a grower’s assistant on a crop field in New York from 1994 to 1998 where Roundup was regularly sprayed indoors and outdoors resulting in chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2012. She eventually quit the job and is currently seeking reasonable compensation and punitive damages in court.

According to the statistics, the number of plaintiffs doubled to 42,700 within three months in October 2019, and analysts predict that it will cost around $12 billion to the company. A groundskeeper in California was awarded $300 million in damages by a jury in the initial Roundup lawsuit, which later reduced to $78 billion. Amidst such speculations and allegations, Wenning decided to step down from his designation for the welfare of the company.

On Thursday, a Miami jury ordered Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to pay a Florida-based woman $9 million after finding that their talc-based product caused the woman's mesothelioma. The verdict is considered to be the first in the Sunshine State.

According to the jury, J&J was negligent and sold a defective product, which contained asbestos. The plaintiff will receive $3 million for past medical expenses and $6 million for past and future pain and suffering.

Two days ago, attorneys for J&J and the plaintiff, a 62-year-old woman who had alleged that asbestos in its baby powder caused her mesothelioma, reached settlement bringing a halt to the trial that was underway and had completed opening statements.

Johnson's Baby Powder, one of the most popular products containing talcum powder, is linked to increasing a woman's risk of ovarian cancer if she uses it regularly in the genital area. In a few cases, the cancer tissue was studied using an electron microscope and was found to have talc in it, which supported the claim that the cancer was caused by the body powder and increases the talc-related cancer risk.

Also, Earlier this month, during a different trial, a New Brunswick, New Jersey, jury hit J&J with $750 million in punitive damages, which was immediately reduced to $186 million due to a state cap on punitive damages.