MIAMI (Legal Newsline) – A memo from Miami-Dade County shows that the nation’s prominent plaintiffs firms are competing with and aligning to each other in the hopes of grabbing the most important clients – local governments.
CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) - Saying it is almost inevitable they will negotiate their own slice of a multibillion-dollar settlement before it is done, the judge overseeing federal multidistrict opioid litigation refused to order the parties to set aside a set percentage to pay the fees of plaintiff lawyers leading the MDL.
Law firms leading multidistrict litigation against the opioid industry have borrowed as much as $102 million under the federal Paycheck Protection Program designed to preserve jobs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The law firms said the loans were needed to pay some 3,000 employees.
CINCINNATI (Legal Newsline) – The top legal officials in several states are complaining that their powers have been stolen by the federal judge overseeing more than 2,000 opioid lawsuits.
A proposed “negotiation class” to settle all opioid litigation by U.S. cities and counties could be in deep trouble, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit considers an appeal of the order creating the controversial class and lawyers in two states with big claims urge their clients to opt out before a Nov. 22 deadline.
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (Legal Newsline) - The federal bankruptcy judge overseeing Purdue Pharma’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization granted the OxyContin manufacturer and its controlling Sackler family a two-week respite from opioid litigation to work on a settlement that appeases warring state attorneys general and a growing list of municipal and private plaintiffs.
CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) - Cities and counties are worried and confused as they face a November deadline to join or opt out of an unprecedented “negotiation class” that could determine how much money they get from opioid litigation, a lawyer who represents Texas municipalities said.
Now, Rannazzisi is helping private lawyers pin the blame squarely on manufacturers and distributors of opioids, as well as pharmacies. A post-DEA alliance with trial lawyers has been worth six figures for Rannazzisi, who has been hailed as a whistleblower by those cheering attempts to prosecute the opioid industry for the nation’s addiction crisis.
CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) - The federal judge overseeing multidistrict litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors left little doubt he supports a plan developed by private lawyers to assemble an unprecedented “negotiating class” consisting of every city and county in the U.S.
CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) - Stepping forcefully into a debate that has been brewing since private lawyers first started recruiting local governments to sue the opioid industry, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and the National Association of Attorneys General have urged the federal judge overseeing multidistrict litigation to reject a proposed “negotiation class” consisting of every city and county in the country.
When it hired outside lawyers to represent it in lawsuits against the opioid industry, Harris County agreed to pay a contingency fee of 35%, more than double the rate in Dallas County and equal to the highest in the state.
CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) - The judge overseeing hundreds of lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors has ordered defendant companies to pay three-quarters of the costs of special masters who are overseeing settlement negotiations.
CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) - The judge overseeing multidistrict litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors has named the teams of lawyers who will try to negotiate a settlement of hundreds of federal lawsuits - a complex task given parallel investigations and litigation by state attorneys general and potentially conflicting goals of private attorneys and their government counterparts.
CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) - There will be a lot of familiar faces in U.S. District Judge Dan Polster’s courtroom in Cleveland on Jan. 31, when lawyers gather for a hearing on multidistrict litigation against the nation’s opioid manufacturers and distributors.
CLEVELAND – Plaintiff lawyers in national opioid litigation chose their executive committee so poorly that a federal judge made them choose again. A protest against the original committee had rung out from West Virginia. As a result, four lawyers lost seats, and five replaced them.
