State ex rel. AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp.v. Honorable Moats (Signed Opinion)
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In these consolidated petitions in which Petitioners - Defendants in Opioid Litigation, which included more than eighty lawsuits pending before the Mass Litigation Panel - sought extraordinary relief prohibiting enforcement of two of the Panel's recent rulings, the Supreme Court granted in part one petition and denied the other, holding that Petitioners demonstrated that extraordinary relief was warranted to preserve their right to try Respondents' legal claims to a jury.
The Opioid Litigation began in 2017 when various cities, counties, hospitals, and the State sued manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioid pain medication and other defendants. In these consolidated petitions, Petitioners sought to prohibit enforcement of the Panel's recent rulings that Petitioners did not have a right to a jury trial of Respondents' public nuisance claims and that those same public nuisance claims were not subject to the 2015 amendments to West Virginia's comparative fault statute. The Supreme Court held (1) the Panel did not clearly err when it found that the 2015 amendments did not apply to the public nuisance claims; but (2) the Panel clearly erred by not safeguarding Defendants' right to try issues common to Plaintiffs' public nuisance claims and their legal claims to a jury.
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