By DAN TOMASELLO
LYNNFIELD — A drug company has agreed to pay the town over $10,000 as part of an opioid settlement agreement that was accepted by the Select Board during a Feb. 28 meeting.
Town Counsel Tom Mullen explained that the town hired Scott+Scott four years ago to join a class action lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors. He said a number of municipalities and states have filed similar lawsuits.
Mullen said a potential settlement with Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, had been “blown up” by U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon after she blocked a proposed $4.33 billion settlement offer last December. McMahon rejected the proposed settlement because it included a provision that would have shielded the Sackler family from future lawsuits.
“The parties are now back at the bargaining table,” said Mullen. “There is a lot that has to be worked out on both sides. On our side, there is a question of whether a community such as Lynnfield that invested time and effort in bringing forward its own litigation is going to be rewarded for that and be rewarded for the pressure put on the defendants, and whether it is going to get the same kind of compensation pro rata as all of the other communities.”
Mullen said there has been an ongoing debate about how those future settlement funds could be spent. He said Attorney General Maura Healey has “taken the position that absolutely everything that gets recovered should go into efforts to fight opioid addiction and help individuals recover from it.”
“While I think that is a respectable position, it also strikes me as unfair because there are communities such as Lynnfield that went out on a limb, litigated on their own, took risks and became obligated toward their lawyers on a contingent fee agreement,” said Mullen. “Those communities ought to be free to decide what to do with the funds that are generated by the litigation and the litigation pressure. There is a lot more to come here.”
Mullen said Collegium Pharmaceutical, Inc. has agreed to settle with 27 plaintiffs, including Lynnfield and Wakefield.
“Collegium is a small seller of opioids that was named as one of several defendants in the litigation brought by our outside counsel, Scott+Scott, on behalf of Lynnfield and 26 other cities, towns and counties,” said Mullen. “Collegium recently agreed to settle all of those cases by paying a lump sum of $2.75 million, with the allocation to be done by the plaintiffs through their counsel.”
Mullen said Scott+Scott used “three factors” to determine how much money will be awarded to the plaintiffs.
“First is a community’s relative population,” said Mullen. “Second is the relative harm measured by the amount of opioid sales within the community. And finally there is something called litigation risk, which basically means Springfield gets a bonus because Springfield has done the lion’s share of the work in this case. That is true because the way these litigations proceed is that rather than have all 27 communities get into one courtroom at a time, we have a bellwether case. Springfield sued the defendants, and all of the focus was on what happened in Springfield. The theory is that makes the litigation a lot more doable. And once that is decided or settled, that is going to be a template for settlements for the other communities.”
Mullen said the proposed settlement with Collegium Pharmaceutical, Inc. would award the town $10,140.
“Scott+Scott recommends this, and I do too because even though it’s not a lot of money, Collegium is not much of a defendant,” said Mullen. “They only started selling opioids in 2016. The damages attributed to them are at best small. I think Scott+Scott quite reasonably wants to focus on the big players, including big pharmacies. It’s interesting that the Massachusetts attorney general recently settled with Collegium, and she got $185,000 for the whole commonwealth. That makes the $10,000 for Lynnfield sound not so bad. This money could be spent for any purpose at all.”
Select Board member Phil Crawford noted that the 26 other plaintiffs have to agree to the proposed settlement.
“Do you have any idea of how that is going to go?” asked Crawford.
While Mullen said no, the Wakefield Town Council also voted on Feb. 28 to accept a $24,758 settlement offer from Collegium.
Crawford said he was in favor of the settlement.
“I think it’s fine considering they are a smaller defendant,” said Crawford.
Select Board member Joe Connell agreed.
“I agree with Tom’s recommendation,” said Connell.
Select Board Chairman Dick Dalton also said he was in favor of the settlement.
After the discussion, the Select Board unanimously voted to accept the settlement offer from Collegium. The Select Board also voted to authorize Dalton to sign the settlement on the town’s behalf.