LYNNFIELD — The Select Board has agreed on an opioid litigation settlement with Johnson & Johnson, which will bring about $490,000 into the community over a period of 18 years.
“This does not exhaust the litigation,” said Town Counsel Tom Mullen. “We still have cases pending in the Massachusetts Superior Court against some pharmacies and manufacturers.”
Mullen said the lawsuits seek reimbursement for damages in the form of additional costs by police, fire, ambulance, boards of health, emergency services and other departments due to opioid use.
“The theory is the response to 911 and other calls, for example, are directly attributable to the defendants’ actions, and as such, are damages,” Mullen said.
The town has been a party to legal actions involving a large number of defendants in the sprawling opioid litigation, said Mullen. National law firm Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP, which represents Lynnfield in these lawsuits along with many other municipalities, recommended that Lynnfield accept the settlement.
The settlement, negotiated by Attorney General Maura Healey with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) ― a major manufacturer of opioids ― and a number of distributors would give Lynnfield a payout stream over the course of 18 years that would total more than $490,000. In total, Massachusetts will receive more than $500 million, 40 percent of which will be distributed among all municipalities based on three criteria: the incidence of opioid-use disorder, the number of overdoses and the number of shipments of opioids into communities.
“These funds are not for general-revenue purposes; they must be used only for opioid prevention, education and treatment,” said Mullen.
Mullen said ongoing settlement efforts on the part of Healey are focused on coming up with a “global resolution” with respect to Massachusetts cases.
“The issue there is that communities like Lynnfield, who filed cases on their own in state courts, want to determine how to spend any recovered damages,” Mullen said. “Money from those suits filed by AG must go to opioid causes. But we believe we know best how to spend that money and we believe we have the right to determine what to do with any damages we recover. That’s why it was important that we file cases in state courts so how we spend the settlement amount is not limited.”
Scott+Scott will not be taking any payments from these funds.
Mullen said the J&J settlement does not have to be unanimous among all the other communities involved in the case.
“(They) could choose to settle but any opt-outs will result in the state getting less money and therefore having less money to distribute among the communities,” Mullen said.
The largest of the remaining unsettled cases involves the defendant Sackler family. Damages recovered from that case could be larger than from any other lawsuits, according to Mullen.
“I appreciate all the work that Scott + Scott has done and yourself,” said Philip Crawford, vice chair of the Select Board, to Mullen. “I’m surprised at how quickly the settlement came about. I expected this to be 10 years down the road so I’m very happy that this is coming much sooner.”
Crawford said that this money will help supplement substance-abuse prevention programming in the town.
This is the second opioid litigation settlement proposal that came to the Select Board in a span of a month. In February, the Select Board voted unanimously to accept a settlement with Collegium Pharmaceutical, Inc. for a little more than $10,000. That settlement requires the approval of all 27 plaintiffs in their respective cases against Collegium.
“Collegium is a small seller of opioids, named as one of several defendants in the litigation brought by our outside counsel, Scott + Scott, on behalf of Lynnfield and other 26 cities, towns and counties,” said Mullen, mentioning that the company only started selling opioids in 2016 so the damages attributable to them are small.
Collegium agreed to pay $2.75 million (to be allocated among plaintiffs by Scott + Scott). The law firm used relative population, relative harm measured by the amount of opioid sales within the community, and litigation risk assumed by the communities to distribute the money.
Unlike the J&J settlement, there are no restrictions on how the town can spend the Collegium settlement proceeds.
