Earlier this year, in late June, an extraordinary class-action trial regarding the opioid crisis began in state court in Suffolk County. The plaintiffs, Suffolk and Nassau Counties and New York State, claim that the defendants – manufacturers and distributors of opioid drugs and retail pharmacies that sold them – created a “public nuisance” by aggressively selling these drugs in New York while downplaying their dangers and the possibility of addiction.
There were so many parties and lawyers involved that trial opened in the first-floor auditorium of Touro College, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center. The Hon. Jerry Garguilo is presiding over the case and has empaneled a jury. Under New York law, the plaintiffs are entitled to a jury trial on their public nuisance claim; the case is believed to be the first opioid trial of its kind to go before a jury. While a number of defendants settled before or over the course of the trial, the case is still going on as of mid-November, now in a courtroom in Suffolk County.
In early October, Professor Adam Zimmerman, a Professor at Loyola Law School and the author of a number of scholarly articles about class action suits, discussed the legal and policy issues raised by the opioid trial in Suffolk County with Associate Dean Rodger Citron. Their wide-ranging discussion will be of interest to anyone following the opioid litigation in Suffolk County and around the nation, as well anyone who teaches or is taking Torts and Civil Procedure.
Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.
Our guest today is Professor Adam Zimmerman
Professor Adam Zimmerman
Adam Zimmerman is a Professor of Law at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where he teaches Tort Law, Administrative Law, Civil Procedure, and Mass Tort Law and serves as the associate director of Loyola’s Civil Justice Program. Professor Zimmerman’s scholarship explores the way class action attorneys, regulatory agencies and criminal prosecutors provide procedural justice to large groups of people through overlapping systems of tort law, administrative law, and criminal law. His recent articles have been accepted for publication in the University of Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, New York University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. The federal government recently adopted Zimmerman’s recommendations to permit class actions in administrative hearings based on findings that appear in his article in the Yale Law Journal, Inside the Agency Class Action.
Professor Zimmerman graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as Associate Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal and co-founded the first student chapter of the American Constitutional Society in the country. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Jack B. Weinstein in the Eastern District of New York. He then served as counsel to Special Master Kenneth R. Feinberg in the design and administration of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Afterwards, he was associated with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where he represented clients in complex commercial litigation and mass tort cases, as well as domestic and international arbitration.
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