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Civil Litigation and the Opioid Epidemic: The Role of Courts in a National Health Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Abbe R. Gluck ,
Ashley Hall  and
Gregory Curfman
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Extract

The devastating impact of the national opioid epidemic has given rise to hundreds of lawsuits. This article details the extremely broad range of legal claims, compares the opioid cases to other public health litigation efforts, including tobacco, and describes the special mechanism — a multidistrict litigation — through which more than 700 opioid-related cases have been consolidated thus far, with settlement almost certain to follow.

Type
Symposium Articles
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 46 , Issue 2: Law and the Opioid Crisis: An Inter-Disciplinary Examination , Summer 2018 , pp. 351 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2018

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