Politicians and trial lawyers are sticking up companies across the pharmaceutical supply chain like Bonnie and Clyde. Riding shotgun is federal Judge Dan Aaron Polster, who on Wednesday ordered CVS, Walgreens and Walmart to pay $650 million to two Ohio counties to remedy opioid abuse. Now on to the next raid.
Judge Polster is overseeing some 3,000 opioid lawsuits by municipalities and their trial-lawyer friends against drug manufacturers, distributors and retailers. His explicit goal is to push the companies into cutting a big check to do “something meaningful to abate the crisis,” as he said in a 2018 hearing. “We don’t need a lot of briefs and we don’t need trials.”
Opinion | The Never-Ending Opioid Lawsuits
Politicians and trial lawyers are sticking up companies across the pharmaceutical supply chain like Bonnie and Clyde. Riding shotgun is federal Judge Dan Aaron Polster, who on Wednesday ordered CVS, Walgreens and Walmart to pay $650 million to two Ohio counties to remedy opioid abuse. Now on to the next raid.
Judge Polster is overseeing some 3,000 opioid lawsuits by municipalities and their trial-lawyer friends against drug manufacturers, distributors and retailers. His explicit goal is to push the companies into cutting a big check to do “something meaningful to abate the crisis,” as he said in a 2018 hearing. “We don’t need a lot of briefs and we don’t need trials.”