A federal judge vowed to tackle the opioid crisis. Drug companies say that's a sign of bias.
Source: Washington Post
A federal judge vowed to tackle the opioid crisis. Drug companies say that’s a sign of bias.
By Joel Achenbach and Lenny Bernstein
September 15, 2019 at 4:27 p.m. EDT
For the better part of two years, U.S. District Court Judge Dan Aaron Polster has urged some of the nation’s most combative lawyers to craft a settlement that would funnel billions of dollars from drug companies to cities and counties ravaged by the opioid epidemic.
The judge, who has wrestled with what legal experts describe as the biggest civil lawsuit in U.S. history, wants this to happen sooner, not later, because so many lives are at stake. Polster’s best motivational tool has been a firm trial date: Oct. 21, when opening arguments are scheduled to begin on the 18th floor of the federal courthouse near the banks of the Cuyahoga River.
But nothing is simple in this unbelievably complicated case. The latest twist came early Saturday morning when some of the drug companies being sued filed legal papers asking Polster to step down.
They claim his zeal for a settlement, and references to the death toll from opioids and the role of drug companies in the crisis, shows he cannot be an unbiased jurist. The drug companies have broadly denied they’re responsible for the tremendous spike in addiction and fatal overdoses from prescription opioids that began about two decades ago.
In seeking to remove Polster, the defendants pointed to comments he made in early 2018, before any of the parties had begun producing evidence or marshaling their arguments. Polster said, for example, “150 Americans are going to die today, just today, while we’re meeting.”
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Read more: https://beta.washingtonpost.com/health/a-federal-judge-vowed-to-tackle-the-opioid-crisis-drug-companies-say-thats-a-sign-of-bias/2019/09/15/94b12f8a-d7ab-11e9-a688-303693fb4b0b_story.html
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