Fight over money from opioid lawsuits may reach Florida Supreme Court

Sun-Sentinel | By Jim Saunders | October 22, 2024

TALLAHASSEE — After losing at an appeals court, Attorney General Ashley Moody has gone to the Florida Supreme Court in a potentially high-stakes fight about whether hospital districts and school boards should be able to pursue opioid-epidemic lawsuits after she reached settlements with the pharmaceutical industry.

Lawyers in Moody’s office Friday filed a series of notices that are a first step in asking the Supreme Court to take up the issue.

A panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal in August rejected Moody’s arguments that she had the power to enter settlements with the industry that would effectively trump separate lawsuits by local government agencies. The appeals court subsequently turned down a request to take a step known as certifying a “question of great public importance” to the Supreme Court.

As is common, the notices filed Friday do not detail arguments that Moody’s office will make at the Supreme Court.

The dispute stems, at least in part, from seven settlements that Moody’s office reached with a variety of companies because of costs related to the opioid epidemic. Each of the settlements included a “release” of claims filed by local governments. Some settlements resulted from multi-state litigation — what is known as a global settlement — while others came as a result of a lawsuit that the attorney general’s office filed in Pasco County.

Moody in 2022 filed a lawsuit in Leon County circuit court against hospital districts and school boards to try to prevent their claims against the industry. The lawsuit said Moody’s settlements would provide money for opioid treatment, prevention and recovery services and that money would go to communities throughout the state.

Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper last year agreed with Moody, saying the Legislature “specifically granted the attorney general authority to enforce consumer protection laws” and that Moody had the power to enter settlements that prevented separate claims.

But the three-judge panel of the Tallahassee-based appeals court on Aug. 14 overturned Cooper’s decision and ruled in favor of the Sarasota County Public Hospital District, Lee Memorial Health System, the North Broward Hospital District, the South Broward Hospital District, Halifax Hospital Medical Center, the Miami-Dade County School Board and the Putnam County School Board.

The local agencies have sought to recover costs from drug distributors, manufacturers or pharmacies related to treating patients or educating children who have been affected by the epidemic.

“The attorney general does not have the legal authority to unilaterally dismiss, for example, actual and individual damages incurred by the two school boards for increased harms and expenditures for compliance with federal law for special educational needs for disabled students — disabled allegedly by the actions of the opioid (industry) defendants that caused the students or their parents to become addicted to prescription opioids,” the appeals court ruling said. “And this is but one example. The special hospital districts also assert individual and actual damages separate from the general public for harms allegedly inflicted by the opioid defendants that caused these hospitals to have to provide specialized medical care for opioid-addicted and harmed patients. It is not within the attorney general’s power to make such decisions.”

In a document filed in late August at the appeals court, Moody’s office said that if the panel’s decision stands, the state will lose at least $87 million in what are described as “incentive” payments. A brief filed last year said two settlements include base payments and incentive payments. The incentive payments are tied to participation in the settlements by local governments.

In the August document, Moody’s office also contended that “far more funding is at stake: For every dollar a (local government) subdivision recovers against the opioid defendants, an equal amount is subtracted from the state’s recovery. Seeing as many of the seven appellants (the local agencies) have already filed cases, the state stands to lose hundreds of millions in opioid relief.”