Behind the Scenes with Opioid Attys at Landmark Jury Trial

Peter H. Weinberger | Spangenberg Shibley & Liber LLP.

Spangenberg Shibley & Liber LLP was established in 1946 by founding partner Craig Spangenberg. Craig and the firm initially in the 1960s became involved in litigation against “big pharma” when Craig led a group of lawyers who represented children born with severe deformities caused by their mothers’ ingestion of the drug thalidomide. Since that time, Peter H. Weinberger and the firm have been involved in leadership roles in Multidistrict litigation cases involving the drug Albuterol, the drug Benicar, and the MRI dye known as gadolinium-based contrast agents. The Spangenberg firm has also litigated a number of consumer class action cases involving Teflon products, disability insurance contracts, and banking overdraft charges. The Spangenberg firm is devoted to the representation of clients involved in catastrophic injuries and complex litigation and has handled all aspects of pre-trial, trial and appellate phases of these cases. In 2017, Peter H. Weinberger was lead counsel in a case that returned a jury verdict of $28 million in Cincinnati in a wrongful death case. The verdict is the largest wrongful death judgment in the State of Ohio. Pete Weinberger was appointed in early January, 2018 as Plaintiffs’ co-liaison counsel in the National Prescription Opiate MDL No. 2804, pending before Judge Polster in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Pete has successfully handled a wide variety of complex injury and wrongful death cases caused by medical malpractice, defective products, and motor vehicle accidents. In the medical malpractice field, he has tried and settled cases that have involved failures to timely diagnose diseases, failed surgeries, and birth injuries. In the field of defective products, he has concluded cases involving industrial plant explosions, defective insulation products, dangerous drugs and defective machinery. Some of the complex motor vehicle cases have included collisions involving overloaded trucks, tractor-trailer collisions, and railroad crossing cases. Pete is experienced in counseling clients who have suffered catastrophic injuries requiring lifetime medical care and in evaluating and presenting the economic and non-economic losses associated with a wrongful death.

Mr. Weinberger has been appointed as Plaintiffs’ co-liaison counsel in the National Prescription Opiate Multidistrict Litigation case in the Northern District of Ohio Federal Court representing cities, counties, hospital groups and third party payers against the manufacturers and distributors of opiate medications such as OxyContin and fentanyl. This case seeks to recover the enormous public costs associated with the opioid epidemic caused by the illegal marketing and distribution of these drugs. Pete was co-trial counsel in the first case tried to a jury involving public nuisance claims against Walgreens, Walmart, and CVS.

That 8 week trial culminated in a plaintiffs’ verdict in November, 2021. The damage phase of the case is scheduled for trial in May, 2022.

Pete has also served as a member of the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in several cases centralized in Multi-District Litigation including In Re Teflon, In Re Gadolinium, In Re Olmesartan (Benicar) MDL.

Mr. Weinberger has also been consistently selected as a “Super Lawyer” on Ohio Super Lawyers Magazine’s list, including being placed in the Top 10 Ohio and Top 5 Cleveland lists for 2018. Pete’s votes are among the highest received in the Super Lawyers nomination process each year.

Pete was voted by Best Lawyers in America® as Best Lawyers, Lawyer of the Year in Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs for 2013 and as Lawyer of the Year in Medical Malpractice Law – Plaintiffs in 2012. He has been voted among the Best Lawyers in America® since 2007. He has been recognized as a Local Litigation Star – Plaintiff in the 2016 edition of Benchmark Litigation, a publication focusing on leading trial attorneys and firms in the United States. This was the fourth consecutive year that Mr. Weinberger was been selected as a Local Litigation Star by Benchmark Litigation. The publication’s rankings are the result of extensive interviews with private practice lawyers and in-house counsel. The guide’s “local litigation stars” reflects lawyers who are recommended by peers and clients to have established consistent reputations as trial attorneys.

Peter H. Weinberger also has been selected by The National Trial Lawyers Association (a professional, educational, and business organization of trial attorneys) as one of the Top 100 Trial Lawyers in Ohio. Selection for this association is extended to civil plaintiff attorneys by special invitation. Candidates are considered for membership based on superior qualifications, leadership, reputation, influence, stature, and profile in the Trial Lawyer community. Pete has been honored by a number of professional groups. He is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, a Fellow in the International Society of Barristers, an advocate of the American Board of Trial Advocates, a sustaining member of the American Association for Justice, and has received distinguished service awards from the Cleveland Academy of Trial Attorneys and the Cuyahoga County Bar Association. He is a past president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association (formerly the Cuyahoga County Bar Association) and the Cleveland Academy of Trial Attorneys. He has lectured extensively on all aspects of personal injury cases and trial practice.

Dustin B. Herman | Spangenberg Shibley & Liber LLP.

Dustin B. Herman is a partner with Spangenberg Shibley & Liber in Cleveland, OH, where he concentrates his practice on pharmaceutical and medical device litigation, products liability, medical malpractice, catastrophic/brain injury cases, and trucking cases. In 2013, Dustin was named as one of south Florida’s “Most Effective Lawyers” by the Daily Business Review for his role in obtaining a $28.5 million verdict in a brain injury case.

Dustin is a Past-President of the National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40 (2019) and has been selected as one of the National Trial Lawyers “Top 100 Trial Lawyers” from 2014-2022. In 2021 and 2022, Dustin was named to the Best Lawyers® list for Product Liability Litigation and he has been selected as a Super Lawyers’ Rising Star in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Dustin speaks nationally on various legal topics, with a specific focus on Daubert issues and e-discovery. He regularly authors legal publications and co-authored a chapter in the 4th Edition of AAJ’s “Anatomy of a Personal Injury Lawsuit,” which was released in March 2015 by Trial Guides and AAJ.

Dustin currently serves on the Boards for the Ohio Association for Justice and the Cleveland Academy of Trial Attorneys. Dustin served as Co-Chair of AAJ’s Gas Drilling/Fracking Litigation Group from 2015-2016 and is currently serving as Co-Chair of AAJ’s Contaminated Eye-Injection Ligation Group. Dustin has been or is currently representing clients in the following mass tort cases:

• MDL 2804, In re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation (Law and Briefing Committee)
• MDL 2606, In re: Benicar (Olmesartan) Products Liability Litigation (Daubert Briefing Committee)
• Anti-Terrorism Litigation, 1:17-cv-08709, O’Sullivan, et al. v. Deutsche Bank AG, et al. (S.D.N.Y) and 1:17-cv-00915, Holladay, et al. v. The Islamic Republic of Iran (D.D.C.) (Co-Chair, Discovery Committee; Law and Briefing Committee)
• Silicone Contaminated Eye Injection Litigation, pending in state courts in Arizona, New York, and Florida (co-lead counsel)
• MDL 2545, In re Testosterone Replacement Therapy Products Liability Litigation
• In re: Stryker Rejuvenate and ABGII Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation (one of the lead lawyers who litigated cases in Florida state courts)
• MDL 2331, In Re Propecia (Finasteride) Product Liability Litigation (Science Committee); • MDL 2327, In re: Ethicon, Inc., Pelvic Repair System Products Liability Litigation
• MDL 2299, In re: Actos (Pioglitazone) Products Liability Litigation
• MDL 2244, In re: DePuy Orthopaedics Pinnacle Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation
• MDL 2197, In re: DePuy Orthopaedics ASR Hip Implant Litigation
• MDL 2179, In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig “Deepwater Horizon.” Dustin and his wife, Dana, moved to Ohio from Delray Beach, FL in 2015. They live in Cleveland, Ohio with their son, Dylan, and daughter, Ava

I. The law of public nuisance| 2:00pm – 2:20pm
II. The Controlled Substances Act and how it applies to national retail pharmacies | 2:20pm – 2:40pm
III. The opioid litigation has been described as the most complex case of litigation in the history of federal courts. How did we take a complex case and simplify it so that it could be presented to a lay jury? | 2:40pm – 3:00pm