Baltimore is going to be spending about 40% of its opioid $45 million settlement with Allergan on lawyer fees, according to Mayor Brandon Scott.
The city took a risk in individually suing drug companies, instead of taking money from class action suits brought by the states.
So far, it’s paid off. Baltimore is getting more than it would have in those state settlements, but the legal fees are higher too.
Scott said $20 million will go to its lawyers for the Allergan settlement.
Carl Tobais, a law professor at the University of Virginia, says the complexity of the case is probably why the fees were so high.
“This might be an extraordinarily difficult case to assemble and settle in a way that would be cheaper if it were more straightforward or less difficult,” Tobias said. “If you win the case, the lawyers get somewhere between 20% and a third, in a typical case, a personal injury case. But it can be higher if it’s especially difficult or if there's a contractual agreement that sets the parameters.”
Baltimore has been in litigation since 2018 on some of its opioid cases.
Scott mentioned the amount of work the lawyers did to get the Allergan settlement.
“Our counsel only takes payment when we win, which means that we have been fighting on behalf of our city and our residents without the city needing to front the resources to do that,” Scott said. “This includes the funding of expert fees, countless depositions and expenses for the last six years when the city initiated this lawsuit in 2018. They have been fighting every single day since, which shows how much of the focus that this has been for us and the fact that we have intimate knowledge of the challenges the opioid crisis poses to us from the start.”
Scott also mentioned that the companies Baltimore is facing are hiring some of the best lawyers in the business.
What Baltimore got outside of legal fees is $25 million, far more than the $7 million over seven years the city would have gotten if it sued collectively with other states and cities.
Baltimore is still in litigation with Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, Walgreens, CVS, Teva and former Insys CEO John Kapoor.
Considering that Allergan only accounted for 0.5% of the opioids in Baltimore’s pharmacies, the remaining companies could settle for much larger amounts bringing a windfall of funds to the city to pay for services related to opioid addiction, Tobias said.
It could also bring in monumental lawyer fees as well, especially if the cases go to trial.
Currently, the trial date is set for Sept. 16.
