$260 Million Eve-of-Trial Settlement in First Federal Opioid Bellwether Case for Cuyahoga and Summit Counties

By 2019, the opioid epidemic had claimed nearly 400,000 American lives over two decades. Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland, and Summit County, home to Akron, bore particular losses. Overdose deaths, strained emergency services, and overwhelmed treatment programs had cost both counties hundreds of millions of dollars. Their governments sued the companies that supplied and distributed prescription painkillers, alleging conspiracy, public nuisance, and racketeering.

The defendants included the three largest pharmaceutical distributors in the United States: AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson. Together those companies moved the majority of all prescription opioids sold in the country. Israeli manufacturer Teva Pharmaceuticals, which produced several opioid products, was also named. The core allegation was that distributors had a federal duty to monitor their own supply chains for suspicious ordering patterns and report them to regulators. Instead, the plaintiffs argued, those companies looked the other way while pill volumes in Ohio climbed far beyond what any legitimate patient population could require.

U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster in Cleveland was overseeing a multidistrict litigation docket of more than 2,600 federal opioid cases from cities, counties, and tribes across the country. In January 2018 he approved plaintiffs' leadership of three co-lead counsel, Paul Hanly of Simmons Hanly Conroy, Joseph Rice of Motley Rice and Paul Farrell of Greene Ketchum Farrell Bailey and Tweel; three co-liaison counsel, Peter Weinberger of Spangenberg Shibley and Liber, Steve Skikos and Troy Rafferty; and a 16-member Plaintiffs' Executive Committee that included W. Mark Lanier of the Lanier Law Firm and Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik. The Cuyahoga and Summit cases were designated as the inaugural bellwether trial, selected to test the theories and evidence that would shape the broader litigation. The trial was set to open October 21, 2019.

Negotiations continued through the night before opening arguments were due. Between midnight and 1 a.m. on October 21, the parties reached an agreement. The three distributors agreed to pay $215 million immediately. Teva agreed to pay $20 million in cash over two years and to supply $25 million worth of Suboxone, a medication used to treat opioid addiction. Henry Schein, a medical supplier, separately settled with Summit County for $1.25 million. Walgreens, the one remaining defendant, did not settle and was expected to face a later trial.

When added to earlier pre-trial settlements with Johnson and Johnson ($20.4 million), Mallinckrodt ($24 million), Endo Pharmaceuticals ($11 million), and Allergan ($5 million), the total recovery for the two counties reached approximately $325 million. The $260 million agreement with the distributors and Teva was the largest single-event settlement in the MDL and the first time the major distributors agreed to pay anything in the nationwide opioid litigation.