Products Liability & Mass Torts Class Action Review – 2025

I. Opioid Litigation One example of extensive, high-stakes lawsuits in this space is the nationwide opioid litigation, which was consolidated into MDL No. 2804 in 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Other similar MDL proceedings involve prescription medication, PFAS chemicals, and allegedly defective products. These lawsuits stemmed from the national public health crises created by the vast use and addiction to opiates. The manufacturers are accused of hiding or otherwise not being as forthright about the addictive properties of opiates, and are battling claims alleging public nuisance, products liability, negligence, and violations of the various states’ consumer protection laws. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported around 95,000 opioid-related drug overdoses from May 2023 to May 2024. The opioid litigation has seen over 3,000 lawsuits brought by governmental entities and private individuals. The first opiate related lawsuits began in 2014 and were brought by Santa Clara and Orange Counties in California. Other states and private individuals soon followed, bringing claims of public nuisance, products liability, negligence, and violations of the various states’ consumer protection laws. Since the initial onset of litigation, settlements have reached in the billions of dollars, and some of those proceeds were paid directly by the individuals who owned the pharmaceutical companies that manufactured opiates. The class actions in this regard have targeted myriad of defendants. Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson, as manufacturers, have been accused of hiding the addiction risk. Distributors like McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen have faced allegations of failing to act with respect to suspicious opiate orders. Drug stores such as CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart were also named as defendants. As of 2024, the settlement payouts from these companies have exceeded $50 billion. However, some settlements are still being contested. In the proceeding captioned In Re National Prescription Opiate Litigation , No. 22-3750 (6th Cir.), the Sixth Circuit is considering whether to enforce a $650 million dollar judgement against the pharmacies for fueling the opioid epidemic in two Ohio counties – Trumbull and Lake counties. The Sixth Circuit has asked Ohio ’ s Supreme Court to weigh in and determine whether state law permits the public nuisance claim, a type of claim that is asserted to address public problems such as chemical spills. The Ohio Supreme Court heard oral argument on March 26, 2024 in In Re National Prescription Opiate Litigation , Case No. 2023-1155 (Ohio Mar. 26, 2024). The Ohio Supreme Court has yet to issue an answer to the certified question.

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