SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – District attorneys in California can pursue lawsuits in the names of residents outside of their counties, the California Supreme Court has ruled.
On June 25, the court ruled against Abbott Laboratories as it fights a civil lawsuit brought by former Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas, who claimed the company and others delayed production of a generic drug in order to keep making money on the cholesterol drug Niaspan. Rackauckas is no longer in office and was recently accused of fabricating evidence in a rape case to help him win re-election in 2018.
Abbott took issue with Rackauckas purporting to represent the people of the state of California and won a favorable decision in an appellate court. The Supreme Court says nothing in the Unfair Competition Law prevents the district attorney from representing Californians outside of his or her county and the Legislature is free to change that if it wants.
“The state Constitution does not preclude the Legislature’s choice of an overlapping scheme of public enforcement, with no geographic limitations on courts’ authority to impose civil penalties and award restitution in actions brought by district attorneys,” wrote Justice Goodwin Liu.
“Of course, nothing prevents the voters from petitioning their legislators or placing an initiative on the ballot to restrict this authority for local prosecutors if they believe it is not sound policy.
“But we have no authority to impose geographic limits on the broad enforcement authority that the text of the UCL grants to district attorneys.”
The Court of Appeal wrote that DAs could pursue lawsuits on behalf of all Californians if they had the permission of the state attorney general, but the Supreme Court ruled that wouldn’t be necessary.
Under the UCL, the AG’s office is also free to join any enforcement action by a DA or start its own if it feels the DA is not adequately serving the public interest.
Supporting the cause of the district attorneys was the Consumer Attorneys of California. Private lawyers often score contingency fee contracts from DAs to bring consumer protection cases.
Opposing were the U.S. and California chambers of commerce. Companies operating in the state will need to be concerned with statewide implications on actions brought by local officials.