Opioid Trial in Baltimore: Meet the City’s Powerful Legal Team

In 2017, amid a growing national wave of lawsuits against opioid companies, the city of Baltimore began looking for a law firm to handle its case.

It was already clear that Baltimore was suffering from one devastating opioid crisisand the city’s legal department decided early on that it would bring a strong case against pharmaceutical companies that shipped millions of painkillers to the region, said Andre Davis, a retired federal judge who was the city’s top lawyer at the time.

“We wanted an aggressive law firm that would not hesitate, at our instruction, to take the case to trial and not simply accept the first offer made to settle the case, or even the second or third offer,” Davis recalls. .

After multiple interviews, the city selected Susman Godfrey, a boutique Houston firm that has fought election disinformation in court and was one of several companies that helped hold Michigan leaders accountable for contaminated water and end reimbursements and practices of real estate agents. compared to a cartel.

Six years after the opioid lawsuit, the company was little known to most Baltimoreans until recently the money started flowing in from settlements with pharmaceutical giants and the city’s cause went to court. Baltimore’s decision to reject past settlements with opioid companies and hold out for more money has worked undeniablywhich brings in more money for the city than the entire state of Maryland has received as part of it one group settlement with opioid distributors.

Lawyers familiar with Susman Godfrey say the firm is known for its innovative approach and that opponents know it doesn’t bluff when it comes to taking cases to court. Baltimore hired a top firm with no upfront costs and little risk, an expert said.

“Susman’s mentality is that we will be prepared to try the case; we’re going to be aggressive and give the client the best job we can do,” said Ryan McConnell, an attorney who practices and teaches law in Houston. “They handle every case with the idea that if the case goes to trial, they will be the firm that can try the case.”

Susman Godfrey was behind one of the largest libel settlements everreached last year between Fox News and the company’s client, Dominion Voting Systems, over the news network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election.

The company too helped negotiate a $600 million settlement in a class action lawsuit over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan; represented home sellers in a large-scale antitrust case against the National Association of Realtors; sued Google for allegedly misleading users about data tracking in private browsers; and won a $4.7 billion jury award in a lawsuit over the NFL’s pricing of its Sunday Ticket broadcast package — although that judgment has since been thrown out and awaits appeal.

Baltimore had worked with Susman Godfrey before, Davis said. It represented the city in a 2012 class action lawsuit against big banks accused of participating in an interest rate manipulation scheme. Susman Godfrey impressed the legal department with her work on the case, he said.

Founded in 1980, the company pioneered the idea of ​​taking large, complex commercial cases on a contingency basis, meaning the company doesn’t get paid unless it wins.

The approach means less risk for Susman Godfrey’s clients because they don’t have to use their resources to pay for legal services upfront; they simply give the law firm a share of the profits at the end of the case. It also means that Susman Godfrey has an incentive to pick cases she thinks she can win.

“When you bill by the hour, you’re selling that (experience) incrementally, so you’re limited based on the number of employees and the time of day,” McConnell said. “If you get 40% of a case that settles for $100 million or goes to trial… there’s no comparison to clockwork if you’re good at picking those cases and taking them to trial.”

The company’s recent successes have allowed it to pay off huge bonuses to associates in 2023, more than triple what other, larger law firms said they would give that year.

Managing partners Vineet Bhatia and Kalpana Srinivasan said at the time that Susman Godfrey was “at a truly extraordinary moment in the firm’s more than 40-year history, with our highest ever revenue and a record number of cases tried over the past year. and a half,” Reuters reported.

Susman Godfrey’s record and high profile make Susman Godfrey a formidable opponent, attorneys say, providing leverage in settlement negotiations.

“There is a clear benefit to the other side knowing that your team is willing to go to trial and has been successful,” says Mark Drummond, a retired judge and executive director of the Civil Jury Project at New York University School of Law. an academic center launched by Susman Godfrey founder Stephen D. Susman.

“There is nothing more powerful when it comes to trying to reach a good settlement than when the other side knows you are willing to risk it,” Drummond said.

Susman, who died in 2020, was passionate about civil jury trials and their role in the legal system, Drummond said. Susman helped develop the concept of “trial by agreement,” in which attorneys on both sides of a case agree to certain rules aimed at streamlining litigation.

Steps as simple as agreeing on a uniform method for marking evidence and requiring attorneys to talk to each other over the phone instead of going back and forth with written communications can make the trial process easier for attorneys, judges, jurors and clients, Drummond said.

“He was an innovator when it came to making jury trials better for everyone involved,” Drummond said.

According to the firm’s website, Susman first set up a commercial litigation practice in Houston in 1976, and four years later won what was then the largest antitrust verdict in history. The group of lawyers founded its own litigation boutique in 1983 and added Lee Godfrey, the other person for whom the firm is named. Godfrey served as co-managing partner at the firm until his retirement in 2013.

Today Susman Godfrey is on the rankings Number 1 in the country for specialized law firms. It is considered a top company in career development and is known for being selective about who it hires.

The law firm did not respond to requests for an interview for this story.

The pharmaceutical companies on trial, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, have brought their own heavy players. Andrew Stanner, a partner at the leading DC law firm Covington & Burling, leads a team of attorneys representing McKesson. He helped McKesson win major victories in opioid cases in Georgia and West Virginia.

Robert A. Nicholas, partner at law firm Reed Smith, leads AmerisourceBergen’s legal team. He led the company’s defense in the West Virginia opioid case ended in victory for drug distributors.

McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, now called Cencora, declined to comment for this story.

The city has declined to provide a copy of its contract with Susman Godfrey, citing a 2021 Maryland state court ruling that found such agreements are subject to attorney-client privilege.

However, in an email, the city’s legal department said Susman Godfrey will receive one-third of any money the city recovers as part of the opioid lawsuit. Susman Godfrey is also present reimbursed for the costs she has incurred during the case, a settlement that saw the law firm receive nearly half Baltimore’s $45 million settlement with drug manufacturer Allergan.

Those deals are standard in civil cases — and Baltimore got its money’s worth, attorneys said.

Hiring outside lawyers for opioid cases also made sense because state and local governments often don’t have the bandwidth to investigate, develop and litigate complicated cases that involve hundreds of thousands of pages of discovery, hours of depositions and new legal arguments, Reuben Guttman said. , a DC attorney who has written about it public-private partnerships in public health litigation.

‘Can you get someone to do this for a lower percentage? You can always get someone who bids too low, but can you get Susman Godfrey for that? Guttman said. “There’s no risk to the city whatsoever, and it’s a partnership where the city essentially gets 70% and they get an elite law firm.”

The city’s aggressive strategy also changes the calculus for pharmaceutical companies and serves a public interest, Guttman said, by showing the pharmaceutical industry that some plaintiffs will not settle and creating a public record of the alleged misconduct.

The city “had an opportunity to get enough money to make an impact and by continuing the process, they are granting transparency to the impropriety, and that transparency drives regulation,” Guttman said.

Davis said the city’s decision posed risks, but that “smart, insightful attorneys” through the legal department and Susman Godfrey helped Baltimore secure millions in settlement money to address the opioid crisis.

“As far as I’m concerned, whatever they get, they deserve it,” Davis said.