Court: Florida AG can't block opioid lawsuits by hospital districts, school boards
TALLAHASSEE -- A state appeals court Wednesday ruled that Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody could not prevent opioid-epidemic lawsuits filed by hospital districts and school boards after she reached settlements with the pharmaceutical industry.
A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal overturned a 2023 decision by Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper that said Moody had the power to enter settlements that effectively included trumping separate claims by local government agencies.
Wednesday's ruling was a victory for 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. They have sought to pursue lawsuits to recover costs related to treating patients and educating children affected by the opioid epidemic.
All of the local agencies had sued drug distributors, manufacturers or pharmacies because of 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."
Moody's office entered into seven settlements with a variety of companies — with each of the settlements including 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 the 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. But the hospital districts and school board argued that Moody did not have the authority to release their claims.
Cooper's decision last year said 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.
"Allowing defendants (the hospital districts and school districts) to continue pursuing their subordinate opioid claims threatens Florida's sovereign interest in vindicating its citizens' rights — all of its citizens' rights — when confronted with societal harms such as the opioid crisis," Cooper wrote. "These are collective harms. They do not flow in an insular fashion to individual (political) subdivisions — the harms cross city and county lines. Indeed the opioid settlements consider the pervasive harms caused by the opioid crisis and apply a mixture of statewide and local solutions. … Defendants' continued pursuit of their opioid claims in contravention of the opioid settlements jeopardizes the flow of tens of millions of dollars that will aid in the abatement of the opioid epidemic throughout the state of Florida."
But the appeals-court ruling, written by Judge Brad Thomas and joined by Judges Ross Bilbrey and Thomas Winokur, said the Legislature has "assigned the rights of legal representation of claims to appellants (the hospital districts and school boards) themselves, not the attorney general."
"In essence, the attorney general asserts the unilateral substantive authority to dispose of appellants' claims on behalf of the people of Florida, notwithstanding the enactment of law assigning that authority to appellants," the 19-page ruling said. "But the attorney general is the 'chief state legal officer' of the state, not the client. As the state's chief legal officer, 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 ruling also said Moody "argues unpersuasively that as the state's chief legal officer, she may bar appellants from representing themselves, while simultaneously denying any interest in representing appellants. The attorney general argues that it is her prerogative to eliminate the value of appellant's individual claims for harms caused by the opioid defendants, as a 'bargaining chip' to obtain this global financial settlement. Thus, the attorney general asserts that she may disavow these school boards' and hospital districts' actual damages for her own negotiating prerogatives."
"No doubt the global settlement achieves many laudable goals," the ruling added. "But it cannot deprive appellants of their legal rights to be made whole for their unique losses."