Welcome to Critical Mass, Law.com's weekly briefing for class action and mass tort attorneys. A Philadelphia judge in a Risperdal trial has reduced a record $8 billion jury verdict to $6.8 million. A group of pharmacies facing an Oct. 13 trial over opioid prescriptions have petitioned the 6th Circuit, again, to overturn several pretrial rulings. Find out which firm sued a school where a bullied 9-year-old committed suicide.

Feel free to reach out to me with your input. You can email me at [email protected], or follow me on Twitter: @abronstadlaw.

Judge Axes $8 Billion Award

A Pennsylvania judge slashed a record $8 billion Risperdal verdict to $6.8 million.

Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Kenneth Powell gave no reason in his Jan. 17 ruling, which came in the first punitive damages trial involving Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug alleged to cause boys to grow breasts. Plaintiff's attorney Thomas Kline (Kline & Specter) vowed to appeal, as did Janssen Pharmaceuticals' parent company, Johnson & Johnson. David Abernethy (Drinker Biddle) filed Janssen's post-trial motions.

The news comes as Johnson & Johnson, trading at a 52-week high this month, released better-than-expected fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday.

The Oct. 8 verdict prompted the American Tort Reform Association to rank the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas at the top of its Judicial Hellholes list last year. In a statement, ATRA said it was encouraged by Powell's decision, adding:

"There are over 7,000 Risperdal lawsuits pending in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas' Complex Litigation Center, and recently, Pennsylvania courts have found that patients were aware of the associated risks of the medication as early as 2006. That essential fact should be central to resolving these remaining claims."

Carl B. Stokes Federal Court House Building in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo: Amanda Bronstad)

Opioid Objections Arise Again Before the 6th Circuit

Since pharmaceutical distributors reached a $260 million settlement that averted the first federal bellwether trial over the opioid crisis in October, lawyers have been duking it out over the next phase, in which pharmacies, such as CVS and Walmart, are the defendants.

That trial is set for Oct. 13 and involves the same plaintiffs: the Ohio counties of Cuyahoga and Summit. On Friday, the pharmacies petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to overturn several of U.S. District Judge Dan Polster's pretrial rulings, including a "sweeping order" for every prescription filled by all their pharmacists across the nation since 2006. The petition is another jab at Polster, who is overseeing 2,600 lawsuits in an MDL in the Northern District of Ohio. The pharmacies already tried to force his recusal from the MDL, then sought an order banning him from ex parte communications.

I reached out to the MDL's plaintiffs' executive committee: Paul Hanly (Simmons Hanly Conroy), Paul Farrell (Greene Ketchum) and Joe Rice (Motley Rice). They told me:

"The 6th Circuit has already denied previous appeals on these matters. This is just the latest in a series of attempts by the defendants to delay and avoid accountability. The public has a right to know how, when, and where distributors and pharmacies flooded their neighborhoods with opioid pills."

Who Got the Work?

Grant & Eisenhofer has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the mother and grandmother of a 9-year-old who committed suicide in 2018 after being bullied at school. Director Diandra "Fu" Debrosse Zimmermann, who founded the firm's Birmingham, Alabama, office last year, filed the suit on Jan. 16 against U.S. Jones Elementary School and several officials, including a teacher who dismissed fourth grader Mckenzie Adams' complaints of bullying, which included racial slurs. "The behavior of school and district officials was not only morally appalling but also a direct contravention of federal and state law, which require schools to enact and enforce policies against harassment and bullying," Zimmermann said in a statement.

Here's what else is happening:  

Frank Finding: A federal judge who approved the $1.4 billion class action settlement over Equifax's data breach called Ted Frank (Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute) a "serial objector" who gave out "false and misleading information" about the deal. In a Jan. 13 order, Northern District of Georgia Chief Judge Thomas Thrash found that Frank, who had challenged the settlement's estimated value, used a "chat-bot" that had incorrect information about the agreement. Frank said he had "no idea what the judge thinks I said that was false and misleading" and planned to appeal the order.

Rolled Up: Shareholder lawsuits had a new target in 2019: The cannabis industry. According to NERA Economic Consulting's annual report, released on Tuesday, six securities class actions targeted cannabis companies, compared to one in 2018. Overall filings remained high, and average settlements low last year, according to the report. Also: Earlier this month, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc.'s Securities Class Action Services released its own report ranking the top 25 shareholder settlements outside North America. As of Dec. 31, 2019, The Netherlands raked up the highest dollar amount, at $2.4 billion, while Australia topped the largest number, with 17 settlements.

Weeding Out: Opening statements are set to begin in at least two trials this week involving the herbicide Roundup—that is, if Bayer's Monsanto doesn't settle them first. Bayer is in talks to resolve batches of the 42,700 lawsuits across the country alleging Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But lawyers in trials in California's Contra Costa County Superior Court and Missouri's St. Louis City Circuit Court are picking jurors this week. Another trial, originally set to begin on Friday in California's Riverside County Superior Court, was continued to July 24.

Thanks for reading Critical Mass! I will be back next week.