The Brylski Company 1/23/2018 – The City of Covington has hired the local Louisiana law firm Porteous, Hainkel & Johnson LLP to take on America’s pharmaceutical industry for knowingly mislabeling and misrepresenting their opiate-based drugs, resulting in a spiraling addiction crisis across the nation. On January 16, 2018, the Covington City Council gave Mayor Mike Cooper the authority to retain Porteous, Hainkel & Johnson LLP for representation in a civil action lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
“Our law enforcement and criminal justice system is on the front lines of dealing with the crisis, which is impacting families from every spectrum of our society,” Cooper said. “We have chosen a local law firm, Porteous Hainkel & Johnson LLP, with 90 years of experience and four offices in Louisiana to help us seek reimbursement for the incredible public costs created by this rampant problem. Hopefully, we can recover some of the extensive costs that the City has incurred dealing with this rampant problem and put the money into treatment programs to address the addiction problem firsthand.”
Porteous, represented by local attorneys Ralph Alexis and Lozes, is part of a national leadership team of attorneys that includes lead consultant Stuart Smith LLC, Kevin Thompson, Kevin Malone and Kent H. Robbins. Their clients will consist of hospitals, parishes, counties, cities, non-profit health providers, drug rehab centers, coroners, foster care agencies, and other public third-parties like local police departments in states from Missouri, West Virginia, New York, Florida, Ohio, Minnesota and Texas.
“Due to extensive public indebtedness on federal and state levels, it seems reasonable and logical to conclude that those who profit off this health disaster should pay,” Smith said. “The American civil justice system is well suited for this purpose.”
“Facts show that pharmaceutical drug companies and their distribution partners exaggerated the benefits of opioids, downplayed risks and consequences, knew the drugs were being overly prescribed, yet failed to warn doctors of the extremely addictive nature of the narcotics and the need to strictly limit and monitor the dose,” Smith said.
The lawsuits also focus on distributors’ violation of the Controlled Substances Act by failing to report the unusual patterns associated with the opioid purchases and use. The attornes point to multiple on -the -record admissions of wrongdoing by many manufacturers and distributors of opioids. Many of these target defendants have pleaded guilty to criminal violation and/or paid massive fines; their liability is unquestioned, according to Smith.
The Center for Disease Control in 2016 disputed pharmaceutical company claims that opiate addiction is not possible in patients with chronic pain
CDC and Federal Drug Administration guidelines in 2016 also stated that the benefits of high opiate dosage for chronic pain are not established and not proven to increase patient function or have a long-term benefit in reducing pain.
“The legal team will help local governments like Covington in attempts to recoup the unreimbursed expenses for dealing with a drug crisis which is reducing America’s life-expectancy and resulting in a death-rate that now out-paces violent gun deaths in the nation’s largest cities,” Lozes said. “It’s time to help those like Chief Lentz, who are putting their lives on the line through programs like Operation Angel to deal with a problem that clearly (was) created in the name of profit.”
Read the entire release at brylskicompany.com
Ed: Will this set a precedent for every entity that neglects safety for profit?
