West Virginia
State announces $83 million opioid settlement with Walgreens
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia has settled for $83 million with Walgreens for the pharmacy store chain’s role in perpetuating the opioid crisis in the U.S. state with the most per capita overdose deaths, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced Wednesday.
That brings the total West Virginia dollars brought in from opioid litigation to more than $950 million, according to the Attorney General’s office. The state now has one remaining opioid case to close out. A trial with Kroger is set for June.
“We’re all down, one to go,” Morrisey said. “We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
The settlement resolves a lawsuit that alleged the pharmacy chain failed to maintain effective controls to prevent an oversupply of opioids in the state.
In response, Walgreens officials said the chain has increased patient education on safe opioid use and made the opioid overdose reversal medication Naloxone available in its 9,000 Walgreens pharmacies nationwide, among other measures to abate the drug crisis.
“As one of the largest pharmacy chains in the nation, we remain committed to being a part of the solution,” pharmacy chain officials said in a statement.
Walgreens agreed to pay the settlement within an eight-year period, Morrisey said. The money from all opioid settlements will be distributed throughout the state to abate the opioid crisis.
Walgreens is part of a larger litigation involving other major pharmacies — Kroger, Walmart, CVS and Rite Aid.
Morrisey announced in September that Walmart and CVS Pharmacy were settling with West Virginia for a combined total of $147 million in a lawsuit over the companies’ roles in contributing to the oversupply of prescription drugs that fueled the opioid epidemic.
In August, West Virginia cities and counties reached a $400 million tentative settlement with three major U.S. drug distributors: AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. In April, Morrisey announced the state would receive $99 million in a settlement finalized with Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.
The West Virginia Attorney General’s Office is alleging that Kroger failed to report suspicious drug orders to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy. Further, the state alleges that Kroger effectively had no suspicious order monitoring policy for a period of time when opioids were being distributed in significant quantities throughout the state.
Connecticut
Woman gets probation for abandoning baby, attacking mother
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut woman who abandoned an 8-month-old girl in a dumpster after assaulting the child’s mother has been sentenced to three years of probation, according to court officials. Both the baby and her mother survived.
Andiana Velez, 26, was sentenced Tuesday in state court in New Haven after having pleaded guilty to felony charges of assault and risk of injury to a minor in connection with the events in October 2020. A prosecutor had sought prison time for Velez.
Judge Gerald Harmon also gave her a 10-year suspended prison sentence, meaning she could be sent to prison if she violates probation. She was jailed on bond for 18 months after her arrest but was freed about six months ago when a judge reduced bail to a promise to appear in court, her lawyer said.
Police said Velez, of Hamden, had cared for the child during a weekend in October 2020. While at a New Haven gas station with the girl and the child’s mother, the mother told police Velez attacked her with a knife and drove off with the baby. Police said the mother had minor puncture wounds.
Velez told police it was the child’s mother who pulled a knife on her.
The girl was later found shivering and crying in a dumpster outside a New Haven apartment complex by a local resident, police said. The child also had burns on her hands, officials said.
Velez’s lawyer, Paul Carty, said Wednesday that Velez did not cause the baby’s burns. He declined to elaborate. He called Velez’s sentence “appropriate under the circumstances.”
“She already did 18 months,” Carty said. “So it’s not like they patted on her head and sent her out the door.”
Prosecutor Stacey Miranda did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Connecticut
Alex Jones’ lawyer avoids discipline over medical records release
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut judge on Tuesday ruled that a Texas lawyer for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones committed misconduct but will not be disciplined in connection with the improper disclosure of confidential medical records of relatives of Sandy Hook school shooting victims.
Attorney Andino Reynal, based in Houston, failed to safeguard the sensitive information and failed to take adequate steps after discovering the improper disclosure, Judge Barbara Bellis wrote in her decision.
Reynal did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday.
The Sandy Hook families’ lawyers gave the medical records to Jones’ attorney in Connecticut, Norm Pattis, as part of discovery in the families’ lawsuit against Jones for calling the school shooting a hoax. The case went to trial in Connecticut in September and resulted in Jones being ordered to pay more than $1.4 billion in damages to the families.
Pattis was suspended for six months by Bellis earlier this month over disclosure of the records to other attorneys, including Reynal, who were not authorized to have them. The documents were never released publicly.
Reynal represented Jones in another trial in Texas, where Jones was ordered to pay nearly $50 million to the parents of one of the slain Sandy Hook children for repeatedly saying on his Infowars show that the shooting never happened. Jones says he is appealing both cases.
Pattis’ office gave the confidential records to Jones’ bankruptcy lawyer in Texas, Kyung Lee. Lee later gave the documents to Reynal, who gave them to the Sandy Hook families’ lawyer in the Texas trial.
Reynal said in court filings that the improper disclosure was inadvertent, and he did not know the records on the hard drive that he received from Lee were subject to a confidentiality order.
An appeals court has put Pattis’ suspension of his law license on hold pending a review of his appeal.
North Carolina
Court OKs dismissing UNC student lawsuit seeking refunds
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A trial judge was correct to dismiss a lawsuit filed by then-University of North Carolina students seeking tuition, housing and fee refunds when in-person instruction was canceled during the 2020 spring semester as the coronavirus pandemic began, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.
Several students at UNC system campuses and a parent who paid to enroll her daughter contend they deserve pro-rated reimbursements when system campuses were shuttered in March 2020 and instruction was transferred online. The plaintiffs also wanted similar refunds for other students within the 17-campus system who were affected.
The General Assembly passed a law in 2020 that gave public and private colleges immunity from pandemic-related legal claims for tuition and fees for acts occurring after a COVID-19 emergency was announced until June 1 of that year.
The law weighed heavily in Tuesday’s unanimous opinion by a three-judge panel. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Donna Stroud wrote that the plaintiffs alleged adequately that they had implied contracts with the UNC system for academic and related services. But the 2020 law was constitutional as applied to the lawsuit claims, Stroud wrote, meaning the case was barred from moving forward.
The appeals court upheld a June 2021 decision by Superior Court Judge Edwin Wilson, Jr., who had sided with the UNC Board of Governors — the lawsuit defendants — and dismissed the case. But he had not described his reasoning, according to Tuesday’s opinion, which was agreed to by Judges Allegra Collins and Jeffery Carpenter.
In an opinion written by Stroud in October in a separate matter, a Court of Appeals panel ruled that other UNC students could continue their lawsuit seeking monetary damages for fees they paid before in-person fall 2020 classes were canceled due to COVID-19. The 2020 legal immunity law didn’t apply here because the alleged damages happened outside its time limitations. The state Supreme Court hasn’t yet ruled on a request by the UNC board to hear an appeal in that case.
Connecticut
Mom sentenced to 40 years for killing son, 8
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut woman has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for suffocating her 8-year-old son and then setting their house on fire.
Prosecutors said Karin Ziolkowski killed her son, Elijah, in their Meriden home on Nov. 14, 2016, and then used tiki torch oil to set two fires. Rescuers could not resuscitate the boy, whose death was ruled a homicide by asphyxia.
Ziolkowski was arrested in October 2017 in North Carolina. She was sentenced Tuesday to four decades in state prison for murder and 10 years for arson, to be served concurrently. A Superior Court jury in New Haven found her guilty on both charges on Nov. 8, 2022.
“Though nothing can bring back Elijah or lessen the pain of his loved ones, we hope today’s prison sentence brings Elijah’s family some measure of peace now that the person responsible for his senseless and unimaginable death has been brought to justice,” New Haven State’s Attorney John P. Doyle Jr. said in a statement.
California
Motorcycle gang member gets 10 years for killing policeman
POMONA, Calif. (AP) — A member of the Mongols motorcycle gang who shot and killed a Pomona police officer in 2014 was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison.
David Martinez, 44, was sentenced for voluntary manslaughter for the October 2014 slaying of Shaun Diamond.
Diamond, 45, was a SWAT team member who was was taking part in a multi-agency operation targeting the Mongols. He was helping execute a search warrant at the San Gabriel home where Diamond lived with parents, sister, girlfriend and two children.
Officers had been forcing their way into the home when Martinez fired a shotgun. The blast struck Diamond in the back of the neck, severing his spine. He was removed from life support a day later.
Martinez surrendered to authorities shortly after the shooting. Martinez said he didn’t hear the SWAT officers identify themselves and thought his fellow Mongols were coming for him because he had wanted to quit the gang.
Martinez said he was only trying to protect his family and called the shooting an accident.
Prosecutors said Martinez was lying and had never intended to leave the Mongols.
In two previous trials, jurors acquitted Martinez of first-degree murder and second-degree murder. But in November, he pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm on a police officer.
Because he already has spent more than eight years behind bars, Martinez could be released as early as March.
