Proceedings moving apace before Ohio U.S. District Judge Dan Polster bode the worst of all solutions to the opioid crisis – a swift global settlement modelled on the tobacco settlement of the 1990s. The result will inflict lasting damage on our constitutional order and do virtually nothing to solve the opioid crisis. Opioid abusers, just like smokers in the infamous tobacco settlement, stand to receive nothing. A single unelected federal judge will have feigned to have “solved” opioids, levied billions in unlegislated taxation, made drugs more costly and harder to secure for non-abusers while leading abusers to turn to heroin and fentanyl, and filled state and local coffers with revenue-by-judiciary while richly endowing trial lawyer barons – hand-picked by the judge – with billions in public funds. A swift education of the American public about this abuse of the judicial process is in order, not a swift settlement.
Judge Polster seeks not just a speedy global settlement of the 200 federal opioid lawsuits that have been transferred to his Ohio courtroom under the mantle of Multidistrict Litigation (“MDL”). Conceding that he lacks jurisdiction over some thousands of related state court cases, the judge has nonetheless invited state attorneys general who have brought such suits or are contemplating state suits, to join: “I can pick up the phone and call any state attorney general I want and invite him or them to be involved, and I'm sure they will,” the judge said in a later hearing. “My objective is to do something meaningful to abate this crisis and do it in 2018.”
