As the Wall Street Journal reports, former Mississippi attorney general and longtime Overlawyered favorite Michael Moore has been collaborating with Ohio Attorney General Michael DeWine, with other elected government attorneys, and with other trial lawyers to seek lift-off of suits against painkiller makers and distributors. The headline was “Lawyers Hope to Do to Opioid Makers What They Did to Big Tobacco,” which got several of us going on Twitter:
Parlay sweetheart attorney general contracts into multi-billion-$-fees? https://t.co/t9OQ2zupwm
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) July 24, 2017
Which in turn played off Jonathan Adler’s:
Create a highly profitable cartel that funds state projects & is protected by federal regulations? https://t.co/2Vxf9ujp2W
— Jonathan H. Adler (@jadler1969) July 24, 2017
And Gabriel Malor’s:
Get astoundingly rich with the help of Congress? https://t.co/VUxoX9bC6P
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) July 24, 2017
Mine drew a number of responses, including this from Bloomberg View business columnist Joe Nocera:
Damn straight! That's the business model.
— Joe Nocera (@NoceraBV) July 24, 2017
And:
Don't forget: …and actually secure the future of the manufacturers, with the consumers the only ones who lose anything.
— Carl V Phillips (@carlvphillips) July 24, 2017
Woo Hoo! I can't wait until I get to tell a cancer patient all I can give her is a Tylenol! ?
— Bona Felis (@scsloan01) July 25, 2017
In a more conventional op-ed vein, there’s this from Tiger Joyce.
One Comment
It astounds me that these Attorneys General find the gall to sue Drug companies. Somehow prescribed pain medications go from prescriptions to CRISIS nearly overnight. Why didn’t these elected defenders of law see any of this coming? These days everything is a crisis.
Ohio Attorney General DeWine is also running for Governor, this couldn’t have anything to do with any lawsuit?