Last month, the primary of an avalanche of proceedings filed against the manufacturers and distributors of opioid painkillers went to trial. The state of Oklahoma is trying to convince a court that drugmaker Johnson and Johnson is legally responsible for the epidemic of dependency and death resulting from opioids. Oklahoma isn’t alone. There is a countrywide movement by using state and local governments to go after opioid manufacturers. At its middle is lawyer Mike Moore.
Moore says he’s “just a rustic legal professional from Mississippi.” But he has engineered the maximum beneficial legal settlements in American records; the 1998 case in which Big Tobacco paid billions to address smoking-associated fitness problems and the 2015 settlement with oil giant BP over its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Now Mike Moore, alongside his legal allies, has aimed at the opioid enterprise. As we first pronounced overdue ultimate 12 months, he says he has effective new evidence that proves states like Ohio, some of the toughest hit by the opioid epidemic, have to accumulate billions from all of the businesses he’s suing.
Mike Moore: If we attempt the Ohio case, if we win a verdict against those producers and distributors, it could bankrupt them. It’d put them outta the enterprise.
Bill Whitaker: Truly? These are big, profitable–
Mike Moore: Huge.
Bill Whitaker: –rich companies.
Mike Moore: Well, you know– they can be as profitable as they want to. But– Ohio is dropping $4 billion or $5 billion a year from the opioid epidemic. And they are losing five 000 or 6,000 human beings 12 months from overdose deaths. So when a jury hears the evidence, in this case, they are not gonna award just a couple of hundred million dollars. It can be $100 billion. And whoever amongst these agencies thinks they could get up to that? Success.
