A Florida appeals court has blocked the state attorney general’s effort to unilaterally extinguish opioid damages claims filed by local hospital and school districts as part of the state’s legal settlement with the same opioid manufacturers and marketers.
The First District Court of Appeal sided with the local districts, including Lee Health and the Miami-Dade County School Board, in an Aug. 14 opinion. And on Sept. 19, the appeals court denied a motion by Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office to certify the key legal question in the case with the state Supreme Court.
Some Florida health districts and the Miami-Dade School District have been pursuing federal opioid claims in the multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the Northern District of Ohio. Moody’s office has been working on a statewide settlement with the same opioid defendants that would have stopped the local districts’ pursuit of damages claims against the companies.
“No public hospital has signed off on the attorney general’s settlements, and for good reason: No portion of the settlement proceeds were allocated to public hospitals,” the North Broward Hospital District said in a statement quoted in the appeals court’s opinion.
The First District court concluded that the appellant hospital and school districts are not members of the state’s executive branch and thus are not somehow subject to Moody’s legal control.
“... The attorney general has limited common-law authority … to litigate claims common to the state at large – and, of course, claims authorized by general law, and limited by that law – but not to control claims of appellants who assert unique and individual actual damages,” the appeals court said in its August opinion. “To hold otherwise would make the attorney general equal to the governor and the Legislature.”
Timothy Hartley, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who serves as external counsel for Lee Health, said the damages suffered by the hospital district as a result of treating victims of the opioid epidemic exceed $40 million. The District Court of Appeal agreed that the Florida attorney general had no constitutional or legal right to settle and release the districts' claims to recoup those losses, Hartley said.
“She tried to wipe out our claims without us being paid a dime out of the settlement with any of these opioid defendants,” he told the Florida Record. “Obviously, we didn’t agree with that approach.”
Hartley stressed that the opioid epidemic had caused a significant economic impact to hospital districts throughout Florida and that local districts had a right to hold the opioid defendants responsible for those losses.
“We are really the first line of defense against the opioid epidemic,” he said. “Because when people need emergency treatment related to opioid use and addiction, they end up in the hospital.”
In publishing its August opinion, the appeals court reversed a Leon County circuit court’s decision siding with the attorney general.
“No doubt the global settlement achieves many laudable goals,” the court said. “But it cannot deprive appellants of their legal rights to be made whole for their unique losses. The circuit court erred as a matter of law in granting summary judgment for the attorney general in the declaratory judgment action.”
Other appellants in the case included Sarasota County Public Hospital District, South Broward Hospital District, Halifax Hospital Medical Center and Putnam County School Board.