24 November—The ambulance chasers did it again. Yesterday, a federal jury in Ohio determined that CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart were essentially responsible for the opioid crisis in general that allegedly cost two of the state’s counties (the plaintiffs) big bucks. The deep-pockets chains were found to have recklessly created and maintained a public nuisance by dispensing perfectly legal drugs after the drugs had been prescribed by physicians and other drug-licensed practitioners.

The jury verdict is a major miscarriage of justice—more properly called bullshit—and deserves to be thrown out on appeal. The case should have been summarily thrown out by the trial judge. Or the judge should have directed a verdict for the defendants on at least two grounds.

First, take the public nuisance crap. Please. The concept and practice of public nuisance is broadly defined, vague, and tends to be treated with contempt by rational courts. Gayle Carr’s star chamber in the Borough of Litchfield could claim the Carons’ yellow ribbons are a public nuisance, for instance. And we know what Gayle’s girls and the Borough are full of.

Then there’s the reckless distribution nonsense. A pharmacy may not lawfully dispense prescription drugs without prescriptions. That’s a given. And the plaintiffs didn’t allege otherwise. Nor may a pharmacy refuse to dispense a lawfully prescribed drug without facing the wrath of the prescribing physician and patient, not to mention legal consequences. A pharmacist may well know more about drugs than a prescribing physician, but the physician calls the shots.

It’s also more than likely that the ambulance chasers in Ohio reckoned it was easier to sue and collect from a few big chains than from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of physicians in small practices, not to mention the nonprofit medical facilities that likely prescribed most of the opioids . . .