By Heather Payne and Jennifer D. Oliva
Gas appliances pose a grave danger to tenant health and safety.
In a forthcoming article, we argue that the mere presence of natural gas appliances in the home renders a dwelling uninhabitable due to their potential health harms. We further contend that tenants should invoke the implied warranty of habitability to eliminate the continued exposure to natural gas appliance-generated indoor air pollutants.
By Jennifer D. Oliva
Americans are no doubt conditioned to expect spectacular failure in the face of public health crises.
In fact, the most striking similarity between our failed public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the drug overdose crisis is our resolute refusal to learn from our mistakes and the rest of the world and make overdue adjustments.
By Jennifer D. Oliva, Taleed El-Sabawi, and Shelly Weizman
The tragedy of the ever-worsening drug poisoning and overdose crisis in the United States is compounded by a simple fact: We know how to prevent overdose deaths, and yet, the overwhelming majority of individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) lack access to the lifesaving, standard of care treatment.
Research demonstrates that the opioid agonist medications methadone and buprenorphine are the safest and most effective treatments for OUD. As the National Academy of Sciences explained in a 2019 report, these two medications reduce risk of death by up to 50 percent and are associated with numerous other benefits, including improved quality of life, reduced rates of use of other opioids, and reduced risk of contracting illnesses including HIV and hepatitis C.
However, during the worst drug poisoning crisis in U.S. history, which is now killing more than 100,000 people a year, the country’s outdated and restrictive federal regulatory schemes that pertain to methadone and buprenorphine present a pernicious and persistent barrier to accessing OUD medications.
By Jennifer Oliva and Nicolas P. Terry
The much publicized settlement between Purdue Pharma, its Sackler family owners, and the Oklahoma attorney general that we have discussed here, here, and here, posed an overarching question: Post-Oklahoma, would the opioid litigation center of gravity swing back from the states to the federal opioid multidistrict litigation in Cleveland (discussed in detail here)?
A month later, the Cleveland case remains muted, particularly so for the reporters trying to cover what is happening in Judge Polster’s courtroom where, once again, sunshine seems discouraged. In contrast, outside the Northern District of Ohio, the action has been fast and furious and that’s before the promised Oklahoma trial against the non-Purdue defendants.
Speaking of settlements, West Virginia, the state with the highest drug overdose rate in the United States, settled its claims against “Big Three” drug distributor McKesson Corporation for $37 million on May 2. West Virginia had accused McKesson (America’s largest drug distributor and seventh on the 2019 Forbes Fortune 500 list with an annual revenue north of $208 billion), of negligently flooding the state with prescription opioids.
West Virginia’s complaint against McKesson was damning, alleging, among other things, that the drug distributor sent approximately 1.4 million prescription opioids or 118 opioid painkillers per resident to modestly-sized Grant County, West Virginia alone over a five-year period. Read More
In my last post about recent developments in American aggregate opioid litigation, I teased about a future segment documenting a fantastic conversation with Professor Elizabeth Chamblee Burch. This post delivers that promise. Professor Burch is Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and an expert in complex litigation, mass torts, multidistrict litigation, and civil procedure.
Readers can access her impressive scholarly contributions on these topics here.
As Professor Burch elucidates in her research, the United States civil justice system has witnessed the waning of class certification cases and, concomitantly, the rise of multidistrict litigation (MDL) to resolve high-stakes, aggregate civil disputes.
This trend includes the massive national multidistrict litigation currently pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio (Opioid MDL). Unlike class certification litigation, which is governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, the MDL process is subject to the 1968 Multidistrict Litigation Act. Read More
Media reports suffered no shortage of hot takes concerning opioid “arch-villain” Purdue Pharma’s agreement to pay $270 million to settle its OxyContin lawsuit in Oklahoma. The highlights of that settlement include Purdue’s payment of $102.5 million to fund a new Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at Oklahoma State University, $60 million for attorney’s fees and litigation expenses, $20 million worth of drugs to treat opioid use disorder, and $12.5 million to cover the opioid-related costs incurred by Oklahoma’s local governments. Members of the Sackler family, who were not named as defendants in the litigation, also agreed to contribute an additional $75 million to Oklahoma over a five-year period.
A noteworthy concentration of the media coverage dedicated to Purdue’s Oklahoma settlement has involved speculation regarding its potential impact on the numerous outstanding opioid cases in other states as well as the myriad federal cases aggregated in the opioid multidistrict litigation (Opioid MDL) before the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. The New York Times, for example, was quick to claim that the Oklahoma resolution “could jolt other settlement talks with [Purdue], including those in a consolidated collection of 1600 cases overseen” in the Opioid MDL. The Wall Street Journal similarly reported that “Purdue Pharma LP has forged the first deal to resolve more than 1,600 lawsuits blaming the OxyContin maker for fueling the opioid crisis, a move that could lay the groundwork for the resolution of the rest of the litigation.”
Much ado has been made about Amazon’s new hit, “Homecoming,” which recently received three Golden Globe nominations, including one for best drama series. The psychological thriller, directed by “Mr. Robot” creator Sam Esmail and starring Julia Roberts, has been characterized as “an irresistible mystery-box drama” and “the good kind of ‘what the hell is going on here?’ TV.” Tim Goodman described the show, which was adopted from Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg’s Gimlet Media “cult hit” podcast of the same moniker, as a “dazzling” play “on memory, the military industrial complex, conspiracy and unchecked government privilege.”
The series revolves around novice caseworker Heidi Bergman’s (Roberts) experiences administering the Tampa, Florida-based Homecoming Transitional Support Center (HTSC). HTSC is a privately-run, Department of Defense (DoD) contract facility, which purports to assist combat-traumatized servicemembers readjust from the battlefield and reintegrate to civilian life. Indeed, Bergman opens the drama’s aptly-titled pilot, “Mandatory,” by explaining to her “client,” three-tour-combat-veteran Walter Cruz (Stephan James), that the treatment facility is “a safe space for you to process your military experience and re-familiarize yourself with civilian life in a monitored environment, which, just means getting you situated now that you’re back home, rear-wise, health-wise, basically, I just work for you.” Read More
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