State attorneys general are teaming up with the tort bar in an alliance against opioids makers that’s all about the settlement prospects, writes Margaret Little at Law and Liberty:
The Financial Times has predicted a “tidal wave” of litigation that will snowball into a global settlement. Once an industry finds itself in a position where it faces a plaintiff at every level of government in nearly every state, cities, towns, counties and states jostle to put their claims into suit to get a piece of the action, “particularly when it doesn’t cost politicians anything,” as Richard Ausness, a professor at the Kentucky College of Law, told the FT.
Which leads to the heart of the question. Any settlement will likely follow the template of the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, a quarter of a trillion-dollar wealth transfer that bloated state governments, levied unlegislated and cruelly regressive taxes on smokers, and sent $20 billion in unappropriated public money to the state AGs’ favorite donors: the mass-tort trial lawyers who have become government-financed Lawyer Barons.
A similar settlement on opioids would temporarily ease fiscal crises in the many states that have frittered away their tobacco-settlement money; but it would only encourage more such lawless and unlegislated regulation of other targets. Furthermore, it will lead to higher pharmaceutical prices and higher healthcare costs and premiums, in a process that is utterly opaque to the public, taxed without representation to enrich the lawyers (many of them former state Attorneys General stepping into a self-engineered path to personal wealth) and the governments with which they are in league.
Read the whole thing here.
P.S. Esme Deprez and Paul Barrett of Bloomberg on wheeler-dealer Mike Moore.
5 Comments
What I have always thought amazing–if tomorrow morning, I wanted to start a cigarette company called “Coffin Nails”, I’d have to pay into the settlement.
Ms. Little offers another myopic vision of corporate malfeasance.
She entirely skips the question of whether the pharmaceutical companies have engaged in wrongdoing. She also fails to offer any proper remedy in the case that they did engage in wrongdoing. Instead, she jumps right into what a bad thing it will be to transfer presumably ill-gotten gains to the “bloated” states and the lawyers.
Until she comes up with a better solution, I just cannot take her seriously.
Not to try to be funny, but she seems to be screaming that the sky is falling. Except, unlike the fowl with the same surname, she has cited nothing that has fallen as yet.
(I am not saying the gains were ill-gotten. I am just saying that, if they are ill-gotten, Ms. Little has offered no remedy.)
Great point. It’s not like Little can point to any historical example of the abusive nature of states suing the bad corporations.
Allen offers another myopic vision of corporate malfeasance.
He and the attorney generals skips the question of whether the pharmaceutical companies have engaged in wrongdoing. He also fails to offer any proper remedy in the case that they did not engage in wrongdoing but have to defend baseless lawsuits from every side. Instead, he jumps right into what a good thing it will be to transfer presumably legal profits to the states and the lawyers.
Until he comes up with a better solution, I just cannot take him seriously.
Not to try to be funny, but he seems to be screaming that the sky is falling. Except, unlike the fowl with the same surname, Little has cited the gathering storm and history of actions such as this.
(Allan is clearly putting the emphasis on the industry to prove that its actions were legal and have to spend money to prove it rather than having the attorney generals be held accountable for another money grab..)
So what happens should I decide to grow tobacco? Are existing/new farmers penalized in the existing settlement? Just wondering…