-
May 11, 2022
The increasing numbers of opioids ordered by Walgreens pharmacies after 2010 felt like an uncontrollable "ticking time bomb," a former warehouse manager for the company said in recorded testimony screened Wednesday at a bellwether trial over claims the drugstore giant and others illegally fueled San Francisco's opioid epidemic.
-
May 11, 2022
An opioid trial to determine remedies after a jury verdict against CVS, Walgreens and Walmart commenced colorfully and combatively Tuesday as plaintiffs counsel floated metaphors involving spaghetti and cake, pharmacies encountered judicial pushback when challenging a key expert, and former jurors took Law360 behind the scenes of their deliberations.
-
May 10, 2022
The medical director overseeing San Francisco's health programs for the city's homeless population compared their "catastrophic" number of opioid deaths to the 1990s AIDS epidemic during testimony Tuesday in a bellwether federal trial over claims Walgreens, Allergan, Teva and Anda illegally fueled the public health crisis.
-
May 09, 2022
A Stanford addiction expert who's testified in numerous trials brought by governments blaming drugmakers and others for the opioid epidemic testified Monday in San Francisco that doctors, pharmacists and patients were exposed to a "massive misinformation campaign that downplayed the risks and overstated the benefits" of the addictive painkillers.
-
May 06, 2022
America's biggest pharmacy chains are poised for a pivotal trial at the center of multidistrict opioid litigation and the opioid crisis itself, aiming to avert a giant judgment and an enormous expansion of their broader liability in thousands of cases that are suddenly threatening to spiral out of control.
-
April 27, 2022
The California federal judge presiding over a multibillion-dollar bellwether bench trial on San Francisco's claim that Walgreens, Teva, Allergan and Anda illegally fueled its opioid crisis said Wednesday the trial will proceed despite individuals from both sides testing positive for COVID-19, calling it "an important case for everybody."
-
April 27, 2022
Two days of opening statements in San Francisco's opioid crisis trial featured impassioned assertions about the pharmaceutical industry's role in rampant drug abuse, but a Foley & Lardner attorney stole the show with invective so intense that he cautioned the judge against ignoring it as "overheated hyperbole" from an overzealous advocate.
-
April 26, 2022
Drugmakers Teva and Allergan deflected blame for San Francisco's opioid crisis in opening statements of a multibillion-dollar bellwether bench trial Tuesday, saying they're "small fish" responsible for a "minuscule portion" of the city's opioids, and pointing to bankrupt Purdue Pharma as the true culprit.
-
April 25, 2022
The city of San Francisco kicked off an epic multibillion-dollar bellwether bench trial Monday in its suit alleging drugstore chain Walgreens, drugmakers Teva and Allergan and distributor Anda illegally fueled the opioid epidemic, promising to reveal "the myths, the lies and the misleading statements" that fed the crisis and ravaged the city.
-
April 21, 2022
Amid thousands of opioid crisis lawsuits, one of the biggest bellwether trials so far — a seismic showdown in San Francisco federal court — is set to shake up the opioid litigation landscape with an in-depth exploration of the pharmaceutical industry's role in drug abuse overrunning a major American city.