Welcome to Critical Mass, Law.com’s weekly briefing for class action and mass tort attorneys. Find out the two attorneys who got appointed—and who did not—to lead a potential class settlement over opioids. In the Flint water case, could bringing in settlement counsel get lawyers closer to a deal? Plus, the lawyer who represented Equifax is now handling data breach lawsuits for Capital One.

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Opioid Judge Names Lead Counsel, Citing Conflicts

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster on Monday appointed two lawyers, Chris Seeger (Seeger Weiss) and Jayne Conroy (Simmons Hanly Conroy) to be the sole representatives for a potential “negotiation” class of 33,000 cites and counties suing opioid companies.

Why? Because, although Polster hasn’t certified such a class, settlement negotiations are ongoing, and neither Seeger nor Conroy has a potential conflict of interest—that is, they don’t represent the states, where attorneys general have adamantly opposed the idea of a “negotiation” class. Then he named the five attorneys on the settlement team who do: Russell Budd (Baron & Budd), Elizabeth Cabraser (Lieff Cabraser), Paul Geller (Robbins Geller), Joe Rice (Motley Rice) and Troy Rafferty (Levin Papantonio). (In a statement filed on Tuesday, Polster clarified that those attorneys “have not done anything unethical or otherwise inappropriate” and that he was just being “extremely careful” to prevent potential conflicts of interest.)