CHARLESTON – Attorneys representing children born addicted to opioids have filed a motion seeking to reopen and place certain infants on the same active docket as others.
The attorneys filed the motion September 1 in Kanawha Circuit Court on behalf of a Jane Doe plaintiff who is the mother of one such child. They seek to have the authorization for guardians ad litem to provide notice of pending Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome actions before the state’s Mass Litigation Panel and to serve for about 4,000 children whose identifying information remains in the West Virginia Birth Score group.
The request comes after the state Supreme Court Chief Justice John Hutchison transferred the matter to the MLP. Kanawha Circuit Court Judge Duke Bloom must authorize the motion for these children to be added to the case before the MLP.
diTrapano
“Justice Hutchison availed to the NAS children in West Virginia an opportunity to finally be heard in our state’s Mass Litigation Panel,” L. Dante diTrapano, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, told The West Virginia Record. “We have asked Judge Bloom to allow us to give notice to the Birth Score Group that otherwise would not know of this opportunity.”
In 2020, a New York federal bankruptcy judge ordered Purdue Pharma to include the West Virginia NAS Class Bankruptcy Claim in a mediation so the class still could recover monies.
“We were extremely gratified that Judge Bloom put in place a process to allow us to inform families of NAS children about a potential recovery for them from the Purdue bankruptcy," Booth Goodwin, another of the plaintiffs' attorneys, told The Record. "We are now seeking a similar effort to inform these families of the fact that we now have a track for NAS children in front of the West Virginia Mass Litigation Panel.
Together, these attorneys represent just under 500 NAS children in West Virginia (566 including non-residents) who also have claims against the defendants. The defendants are the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, DHHR Secretary Bill J. Crouch, the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health, BPH Commissioner Dr. Ayne Amjad and the West Virginia Office of Maternal Child and Family Health.
According to the complaint, West Virginia has among the highest rates of infants born with NAS, which can have lifelong consequences for the infants.
On August 9, Hutchison signed an order August 9 referring cases involving about 600 NAS children to the MLP. Those lawsuits are filed on behalf of children born addicted to opioids against various drug manufacturers and distributors.
“We are excited that our grandparents, foster parents, and guardians who have been taking care of these babies will finally get some traction in court,” diTrapano previously said. “Our group represents close to 600 NAS babies, and each of their stories are heartbreaking.
“We look forward to the opportunity Justice Hutchison has given us to litigate all of our cases in one place.”
DiTrapano said he and his team of attorneys have been working for years “to get justice for these most innocent and vulnerable victims of the opioid epidemic, but the cases have languished behind those brought on behalf of governmental entities.”
“We are so pleased that Chief Justice Hutchison has answered the call to refer the cases for these children to the Mass Litigation Panel, and we are hopeful that the Mass Litigation Panel will provide these children their own track so that they may receive justice as quickly as possible,” Goodwin previously said. “The quicker they receive justice, the better the outcomes we will see for these most innocent victims of the opioid epidemic.”
The state MLP consists of seven active and senior status circuit judges, and its purpose is to manage and resolve similar litigation that involves large numbers of plaintiffs or defendants.
“These judges — from across our state — are obviously tuned into the challenges faced by children exposed to opioids as well as the damage caused by those responsible for the opioid epidemic,” Goodwin said. “Unfortunately, there are likely thousands of children in our state who were born with neonatal abstinence syndrome.
“Bringing and prosecuting thousands of individual cases outside the Mass Litigation Panel would take years to resolve. These children should not have to wait years. That is why we sought this referral and are confident that the Mass Litigation Panel will see the need for an express track to justice for these children.”
The attorneys involved in these cases are diTrapano and Stuart Calwell of Calwell Luce diTrapano, Booth Goodwin, Benjamin Ware and Jeffrey Vollmer of Goodwin & Goodwin, P. Rodney Jackson of P. Rodney Jackson and Associates and W. Jesse Forbes of Forbes Law Offices PLLC.
In addition to their cases, three other law firms have filed similar cases against the same defendants. Those firms are New Taylor & Associates in Beckley, The Miley Legal Group in Clarksburg and The Manchin Injury Law Group in Fairmont.
“The only manageable forum for such a large amount of litigation on behalf of individual children with NAS totaling over 500, is the Mass Litigation Panel,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote in their motion seeking referral to the MLP. “The NAS crisis among West Virginia children has been so pervasive that in response to the high rate of NAS cases in West Virginia, the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources began in 2016 to track and keep data related to NAS children and currently possesses a list, known as the West Virginia Birth Score Registry, identifying some 4,000 infants born after October 2016 with NAS.”
Parents and guardians of children born with opioid dependency who believe they might have a claim are asked to call 1-833-682-3060.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number 22-P-202 (West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals case number 22-MLP-02)