Opioid Update: MDL Defendants Return to the Sixth Circuit

After a lull in appellate proceedings, one of the nation’s most closely watched cases (non-impeachment category) has returned to the Sixth Circuit, at least temporarily.

Several chain drug stores that filled opioid prescriptions have filed a mandamus petition challenging Judge Polster’s order to produce “transactional dispensing data for the entire United States” from 2006 forward. That order, the pharmacies complain, treats MDL proceedings as exempt from the normal application of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This is particularly problematic here, the petition implores, given the privacy interests implicated by prescription-drug patterns.