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Organizer Ryan Brent, left, and Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley march in the first Tackling Opioids Walk in Annapolis last year. The city is suing opioid manufacturers, distributors and prescribers for perpetuating death and addiction in Annapolis.
Joshua McKerrow / Capital Gazette file
Organizer Ryan Brent, left, and Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley march in the first Tackling Opioids Walk in Annapolis last year. The city is suing opioid manufacturers, distributors and prescribers for perpetuating death and addiction in Annapolis.
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The Annapolis opioid lawsuit has been relocated to federal court following a complaint the city’s lawsuit inappropriately linked national opioid manufacturers and distributors to local prescribers.

Endo Pharmaceuticals, a drug manufacturer, filed a notice April 19 moving the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. Endo argues the city included a handful of locally based doctors, nurses and “pill mill” centers to fraudulently connect the other defendants, none of which are based or incorporated in Maryland, and avoid the sprawling, nationwide lawsuit filed in Ohio on behalf of more than 1,500 entities around the country.

The Annapolis lawsuit has proved controversial, as the city retained Mayor Gavin Buckley’s personal attorney F. Joseph Gormley to litigate the case. Buckley defended the choice over another firm, which was pursuing its own multi-jurisdictional suit, arguing the city needs a local litigator to solve a local problem.

That solution could be in jeopardy, should the transfer stick. The case is now in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, where Judge Dan Aaron Polster is considering pre-trial decisions for hundreds of opioid lawsuits across the country.

Paul Farmer, representing the city alongside Gormley, filed an objection to the transfer. Polster will consider the objection and decide whether or not to remand the lawsuit back to Anne Arundel County Circuit Court. Gormley was not immediately available to comment on the complaint.

A number of complaints from the big pharmaceutical companies have temporarily sent small city and county cases to federal court — and the success is varied. A similar complaint filed against Anne Arundel County failed and the case was remanded back to the state. Baltimore City’s suit remains in state court after a challenge. But several other suits in Maryland cities and counties have become a permanent part of the nationwide suit.

City spokeswoman Mitchelle Stephenson said the city is confident the local suit is different from the national suit. Endo sees it differently.

A case can land in federal court if it meets two criteria: it has to have “complete diversity,” whereby none of the defendants share state citizenship with the plaintiff; and the sought damages top $75,000.

The city lawsuit seeks $400 million, but names local prescribers, based in the city and Anne Arundel County, as responsible for pushing opioids to Annapolis residents and therefore avoids diversity. Endo attorney John Freedman argues the city included the local prescribers to purposefully avoid and undermine the national case.

He argues against the inclusion of these defendants, as the city lawsuit does not explicitly tie the action of the local dealers to the national manufacturers and distributors.

Endo, in the filing, alleges the city failed to take the proper pre-suit steps required by the Maryland Health Care Malpractice Claims Act. While the city’s suit does not allege any offenses under the act, Endo’s complaint argues it applies because the city claims doctors and nurses harmed patients. The damages sought, $50 million per count, also exceeds the maximum damages, $30,000, under the act.

The city’s suit largely mirrors the county’s, and takes on some of the same manufacturers and distributors recently forced to pay out millions for perpetuating opioid addiction nationwide. They are Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Endo Health Solutions, Insys Therapeutics, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Cardinal Health, Inc., the McKesson Corp. and the Amerisourcebergen Drug Corp.

Recently, the state of New York filed a complaint against the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, and distributors Cardinal Health Inc., the McKesson Corp. and the Amerisourcebergen Drug Corp. for fraud and conspiring to circumvent limits on drug distribution.

The Annapolis lawsuit names these companies as responsible for pumping opioids into Annapolis. And alongside the manufacturers and distributors are local prescribers William Tham, Kofi Shaw-Taylor, Happiness Aguzie, Tormarco Harris, Minnie Ndem and Lawrence Vidaver, who are accused of overprescribing opioids or participating in schemes to recommend specific drugs for kickbacks.

The suit also names Jackie Syme and Lawrence Vidaver, doctors with practices in Gambrills and Glen Burnie.

Gormley will represent the city alongside Farmer and Frank Lozupone, both associates with Gormley Jarashow and Bowman. Gormley has extensive experience representing businesses and corporations, including in the healthcare industry.

The city is not yet paying Gormley, as the case is being handled on contingency. Gormley and his firm stand to earn 25 percent of damages, plus reimbursement for expenses, should the city win the case.

Either Gormley or his firm Gormley, Jarashow and Bowman have represented Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley in a number of legal matters since at least 2010, including the city’s suit against his restaurant Tsunami for an unlicensed mural. The firm was also one of Buckley’s earliest financial supporters, donating $2,500 to his campaign in October 2016.

Buckley said the choice to retain Gormley was not his, but rather made by the Office of Law. Former City Attorney Richard Melnick has said the decision to go with Gormley was made before he joined the city.

Opioids, mainly synthetic ones like fentanyl, are the leading driver of overdose deaths, which killed more than 70,000 people in the United States in 2017. In the city alone, the rate of drug overdoses has more than quadrupled in the last four years, from 48 in 2015 to 199 in 2018.

Where opioids in 2015 accounted for 40% of overdoses, they now account for 74%.

This year, there have been 46 overdoses, one of them fatal.