A federal judge appeared likely to grant certification of a proposed class of thousands of cities and counties as a potential model to settle cases brought over the opioid crisis.

At a hearing Tuesday, lawyers for some of the pharmaceutical distributors and the states were among those who raised objections about a proposal from lead plaintiffs counsel in the multidistrict litigation to create a “negotiation” class that would encompass potentially 33,000 cities and counties. U.S. District Judge Dan Polster of the Northern District of Ohio, who has encouraged settlement from the start of the opioid litigation, pushed back against many of the objections.

“There needs to be some vehicle to provide resolution of these cases,” he said at the hearing, which took place in Cleveland. “Everyone knows that trying probably 2,500 cases now, between the federal ones and the ones in state court, first, would sink the state and federal judiciaries. But, also, the amount of private resources would be staggering, and no one would want to do that. So, there has to be a vehicle to resolve them. It doesn’t have to be one vehicle alone.”