This post is brought to you thanks to the help of friend-of-the-blog Kirk Mattingly, EIC of the University of Louisville Law Journal.
Yesterday a Sixth Circuit panel (Siler, Griffin, Kethledge) stayed pharmacies’ production of national opioid dispensing data. With one exception: Ohio data that the court deemed “not so onerous” in light of an upcoming bellwether trial. As the blog reported in January, MDL Judge Polster had ordered the pharmacy defendants to produce nationwide dispensing data going back to 2006—an order opposed by the U.S. Chamber and ACLU alike.
The stay is only temporary, however. The Sixth Circuit paused non-Ohio discovery while it awaits answering briefing (from the plaintiffs and Judge Polster, if he so chooses) in response to the pharmacies’ mandamus petition on the discovery question as well as the defendants’ pleading arguments to strike or dismiss claims.
Stay tuned to the Sixth Circuit Appellate Blog for more appellate activity concerning the opioid MDL.