Trump and Trial Lawyers Target Drug Companies Over Opioid Addiction

[EasyAce]

Making drug-company shareholders foot the bill for a public health crisis is flaky and counterproductive
By Ira Stoll
http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/05/trump-trial-lawyers-target-drug-company

The opioid addiction issue is headed for the next stop on what is now a well-worn path: from public health crisis, to subject for award-winning and heart-tugging journalism, to payday for trial lawyers.

The lawyers are poised to do to prescription drug companies, pharmacy chains, and drug distributors what they did to tobacco companies and asbestos manufacturers—wring from them a multibillion dollar settlement, with a sizeable chunk going to the lawyers themselves.

They may even do so with an assist from President Trump. "Hopefully we can do some litigation against the opioid companies," Trump said earlier this month at a White House "Opioids Summit." "I think it's very important because a lot of states are doing it, but I keep saying, if the states are doing it, why isn't the federal government doing it? So that will happen."

Somehow the Democrats usually on high alert at the risk of President Trump "interfering" with the "independent" Justice Department apparently managed to make peace with the presidential involvement, so long as it involved Trump siding with the trial bar against the for-profit pharmaceutical industry . . .

. . . It wasn't so long ago that Republican presidents stood for reining in civil litigation rather than piling on to it. But then again, it wasn't so long ago that Republican presidents stood for free international trade rather than tariffs, either.

As usual in these sorts of cases, "liability" is likely to be more about having the deep pockets available to fund settlements than with any thoughtful or thorough reckoning with moral or logical responsibility . . .

. . . If evidence proves that their employees or executives intentionally engaged in fraudulent behavior in connection with opioid abuse, those individuals should be held accountable. But the idea of making public company shareholders foot the bill for a public health crisis is so flaky and potentially counterproductive that it's the sort of thing only a trial lawyer, or a politician, could have dreamed up.

[driftdiver]

Trial lawyers are counter productive.

[Victoria33]

I knew this would be their approach.  They know who the drug companies are and they know which patients are getting prescriptions - that is easy, so that is what they will go after.  It's not so easy to find illegal drug dealers with ill gotten drugs from other countries, selling them on the street, in ally ways, in night clubs - no, let's take the easy route.