Walmart, CVS and other pharmacies accused in a key lawsuit of helping fuel the opioid crisis have petitioned an appeals court to overturn various orders by a district judge ahead of an Oct. 13 trial, including one to provide data on every prescription filled by all their pharmacists.

In particular, the pharmacies insist that U.S. District Judge Dan Polster of the Northern District of Ohio, who is overseeing 2,600 lawsuits brought by cities and counties against several opioid companies, improperly forced them to provide prescription data for thousands of stores nationwide, even though the planned trial involves only two Ohio counties.

"The burden imposed on petitions by this nationwide discovery is immense," wrote lawyers for the pharmacies in a petition for a writ of mandamus filed Friday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

On Friday, the pharmacies also filed a motion to stay Polster's discovery order, except for prescriptions in the two Ohio counties, until the Sixth Circuit rules on their petition.

Their petition also alleges that Polster failed to comply with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in at least two other orders.

"In two cases brought by two Ohio counties, the district court has recently and repeatedly disregarded the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, justifying its disregard on the stated ground that the ordinary rules do not apply because the cases are part of the broader opioid multidistrict litigation," they wrote. "But neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has authorized MDL courts to make up the rules as they go."

A spokesman for Walgreens Boots Alliance, one of the pharmacies, said in a statement: "Together with the data of the other defendants, the order needlessly requires the production of data for tens of millions of patients who have nothing to do with the two Ohio counties that are plaintiffs in this case, and which the court has acknowledged are not necessary for the case. We have offered to make dispensing data available, but narrowly tailored to balance the needs of the case with the important privacy interests of our patients."

Other pharmacies include Rite Aid, Discount Drug Mart, and Giant Eagle's HBC Service Co.

None of the lawyers, or representatives, for the other pharmacies responded to requests for comment.

A representative for the plaintiffs' executive committee in the opioid multidistrict litigation did not respond, either.

The pharmacies are the defendants in a bellwether trial in which Ohio's Cuyahoga and Summit counties are alleging they created a public nuisance by filling improper prescriptions for opioid painkillers. Distributors and manufacturers of the pills reached settlements in the cases last year totaling more than $300 million.

The Sixth Circuit petition is the latest in which the pharmacies have challenged Polster's orders. In October, the Sixth Circuit denied their petition, filed alongside the opioid distributors, to have Polster recused from the opioid MDL. And, last month, the pharmacies asked Polster to issue an order banning ex parte communications with himself or any of the three special masters, insisting they had been sidelined by some of his orders.

Expanding on some of those previous complaints, the pharmacies said in Friday's petition before the Sixth Circuit that Polster's orders did not comply with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In particular, they cited his Nov. 19 order permitting the two Ohio counties to amend their complaints to assert new claims against the pharmacies as dispensers, not just distributors, and his refusal to allow them to file motions to dismiss those claims, which "did not identify even a single prescription that plaintiffs allege was wrongfully filled."

The pharmacies have asked the Sixth Circuit to strike the amended complaint and allow them to file dismissal motions. They insisted that the ramifications go beyond the opioid case.

"The applicability of the Federal Rules is of exceptional importance not only to this MDL, but to other MDLs in the Sixth Circuit and nationwide," they wrote. "Unmoored from the federal rules, the district court here has been guided only by its own predilection."

The pharmacies also have asked the Sixth Circuit to limit the amount of discovery that Polster has asked them to provide as part of his "sweeping order" for prescription data. On Dec. 10, the judge issued his initial order demanding prescriptions for a variety of medications since 1996. After the pharmacies filed a motion to reconsider, Polster amended his order to limit the data by going back to 2006. In a Dec. 27 order, Polster noted that his order allowed the pharmacies to provide the data on a rolling basis, with Ohio first, followed by other states and counties scheduled for subsequent trials, and that the data could be used for other cases in the MDL.

But disclosing such "sensitive patient data" also could risk the privacy rights of millions of Americans, the pharmacies wrote. "This production, ordered by the district court, could set the stage for an even more alarming unauthorized data breach," their petition says.

The pharmacies have fought discovery requests in other ways, too. On Jan. 8, they filed a motion to compel data held by the Ohio Board of Pharmacy as part of their defense argument that their stores only represented about half the pharmacies in Ohio and that several others, including "pill mills," were responsible for the opioid crisis.

"That information is necessary to show widespread alternative causes of the alleged nuisance, e.g., the large number of 'over-prescribers,' 'pill mills,' and other dispensers plaintiffs chose not to sue," they wrote in that motion. "The data may well show that any public nuisance relates to non-party dispensing or prescribing conduct, not the conduct of any of the pharmacy defendants."

On Jan. 6, the pharmacies also filed two third-party complaints against 1,000 unnamed physicians in both Ohio counties, a move that the plaintiffs' executive committee, in a motion to strike those complaints filed this week, called "yet another delay tactic interposed to prevent a timely trial."