Behind the historic opioid litigation with Paul Geller

Re-Examination: Conversations with the storytellers behind legal history

In the second episode of Re-Examination, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd founding partner Paul Geller shares the inside story of how a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers, and states, counties, municipalities and even school districts banded together to secure more than $50 billion in settlements over the opioid crisis.

Among those who have paid for what has been called “one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine” are the thousands of communities that have been left to pick up the tab for everything from constant emergency room visits to expensive addiction treatments to the cleanup of degraded public areas like parks, sidewalks and libraries.
For the last six years, a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers and state attorneys general have sought to make pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies pay up. They have filed hundreds of lawsuits alleging they made misleading statements about the risks of opioid use and failed to execute safety protocols.
Paul Geller is one of the attorneys appointed by a federal judge to lead the case. In conversation with Infinite Global Head Writer Andrew Longstreth and M Coffey founder Murray Coffey, Paul explains how he and his colleagues approached telling the story of this national tragedy that left no defendant off the hook.

Thank you for listening. To learn more, visit Infinite Global and M Coffey.