TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Legal Newsline) - Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody announced $860 million in opioid settlements with CVS and three other companies, leaving only Walgreens as a defendant in a trial scheduled to begin in state court April 4.
The Republican AG announced CVS will pay $484 million over 18 years, with Teva paying $195 million, Allergan $134 million and Endo $65 million over a varying number of years. The agreements include $84 million in fees to private lawyers who represented the state and various cities and counties under contingency-fee contracts.
A Moody spokeswoman didn’t respond to request for comment on when the legal fees will be paid out, although the Endo agreement specifies an immediate payment for the private lawyers. The settlement was announced soon after a ruling in her case that allows defendants to point at public statements made by Moody that Mexico and China are to blame for a "scourge" of fentanyl overdoses.
Florida, like many other states, accused opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies of causing the opioid crisis by producing and dispensing too many of the painkillers. Many states and thousands of cities and counties hired private lawyers to represent them under contracts giving them a share of any money they won.
The lawyers who will share in these settlements include Cliff Curry, who along with his wife and law firm has contributed $15,500 to Moody’s campaigns since 2017, according to state campaign records. Adrien and Nicole Rivard of Harrison Rivard have given Moody $9,000 over the same period, records show, and the Newsome Melton law firm gave Moody $3.000 this year and $3,000 in 2017.
Half the fees will be paid to the state’s lawyers and the other half will flow out to private law firms representing various political subdivisions, according to settlement documents. Each half appears to fall beneath a $50 million cap on aggregate fees to contingency-fee lawyers hired by the state.
Some of the settlement money will be paid directly to towns and cities, the AG’s office said, under an allocation program Moody negotiated. In addition to cash, Teva will give the state $84 million worth of Naloxone, a drug used to counteract opioid overdoses.
The opioid settlements have been a boon to private attorneys, many of whom are political supporters of the officials who hired them. Private lawyers are in line to reap some $2 billion in fees under a $26 billion national settlement with the big three drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson. A $478 million McKinsey settlement included $15 million to the National Association of Attorneys General, a professional association that also negotiated a $103 million slice of the 1998 tobacco settlement.