Fordham Law School Professor Benjamin Zipursky spoke with the Wall Street Journal about the difficulties cities will have in lawsuits against prescription painkiller manufacturers.
“There are a couple of things one could characterize as a reach,” Zipursky said. “It’s brought against a number of different companies in the same industry alleging that what they’ve done is somehow committed fraud on the public by infecting the world of medical thinking.”
Still, Zipursky points out that some other highly successful lawsuits have made similar arguments about massive fraud that hurt public health.
“The cigarette lawsuits were cutting edge in all of the ways I’ve just indicated, and those reached a huge settlement,” Zipursky says. Much will depend on what sort of internal documents plaintiffs lawyers have obtained from the drugmakers.