Publication Archive: Opioid Epidemic

The companies “provide no legitimate basis for tossing the jury’s verdict or subjecting the court, its staff, plaintiffs and the community to a complete do-over,” the plaintiffs said. The companies’ motion hinges on arguments already rejected by the court, they said. It was the second verdict from a jury in extensive opioid crisis litigation across…Read the article

Partner Chris Schnieders represented the family of an Excel shooting victim who overdosed from a dangerous combination of opioids and benzodiazepines. Suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, Nicholas Moon has been prescribed this “relentless escalation” regimen by Wichita psychiatrist Elsie Steelberg, M.D. and her practice Advocates for Behavioral Health, P.A. The trial focused on opioid…Read the article

“Videos of sales meetings where they laughed, and they joked about the use of drugs like fentanyl that kill people and how they owned the market and they made the markets. This is what the public needs to see.” Hunter Shkolnik, a lawyer for Nassau County, referring to a trial in which Teva Pharmaceuticals, among…Read the article

The jury began deliberating on Dec. 14 after hearing more than five months of testimony presented by the government plaintiffs and the defendants. A Suffolk County jury on Thursday ruled in favor of New York state and the Long Island counties in the state’s long-running opioid trial, finding that a group of drug companies created a…Read the article

During the trial, the state and the Long Island counties argued that Teva’s downplaying of the risks of opioids led to communities being flooded with prescriptions, while Anda failed to flag suspicious orders. For its part, Teva argued that the state was to blame for not stopping doctors who made irresponsible opioid prescriptions. “We are…Read the article

The jury began deliberating on Dec. 14 after hearing more than five months of testimony presented by the government plaintiffs and the defendants. The amount of damages owed by those found responsible has yet to be determined. Napoli Shkolnik partner Hunter Shkolnik, who represents Nassau County, said Thursday that the number could be in the tens…Read the article

Nassau County lawyer Hunter Shkolnik spent roughly two hours in closing arguments Monday morning, saying the remaining drugmaker defendants, all affiliated with Teva, made sales without any way to do it right. “Actavis Watson, Teva, Cephalon, no systems whatever,” he said. “They made the market, they sold the opioids, but had no system to comply…Read the article

Scorched by cover-up claims in nationwide opioid litigation, Endo Pharmaceuticals is hoping for heroics from a Skadden squad that is belatedly revealing vast volumes of drug marketing records, a strategy that could simultaneously snuff out some discovery deficiencies and fuel new doubts about the drugmaker’s initial transparency. “Where the discovery is in the infancy, there’s…Read the article

Teva Pharmaceuticals is scrambling to stop jurors in a New York opioid trial from viewing internal videos that transformed famous film scenes into parodies of narcotic painkiller marketing, warning that the clips are so provocative they could single-handedly destroy the drugmaker’s defense. Although the precise content of the clips remains unclear, Napoli Shkolnik PLLC partner…Read the article

Paul Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik, who represents Nassau County, said the report “confirmed Arnold & Porter’s reprehensible conduct.” “Today’s recommendation is the first step in holding the law firm and its lawyers accountable for hiding relevant documents of its client’s bad conduct,” he said. Biglaw Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer represented Big Pharma Endo Pharmaceuticals…Read the article