Reversing another key decision by the federal judge overseeing opioid lawsuits, an appeals court has struck the certification of a novel class of thousands of cities and counties that was designed to streamline a global settlement.
In a Thursday ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed U.S. District Judge Dan Polster’s 2019 approval of the nation’s first “negotiation class,” which the lead plaintiffs lawyers in the multidistrict litigation pitched as a method to obtain a global opioid settlement involving a myriad assortment of parties. The 2-1 opinion is another rebuke to Polster, whose “clear abuse of discretion” prompted the Sixth Circuit to reverse one of his pretrial rulings on April 15.
