Pennsylvania AG’s Clout In Opioid Deal Likely Has Wide Reach

By: Matthew Santoni

Christopher Carusone is quoted in Law360 in his capacity as a former chief deputy attorney who now represents clients being investigated by state agencies.

A Pennsylvania court’s ruling that the attorney general had the power to overrule local district attorneys’ objections to a big opioid settlement could affect the prosecutors’ power dynamic beyond the painkiller litigation, overshadowing other areas where they could share jurisdiction or clash over politically sensitive issues, attorneys told Law360.

Although the Commonwealth Court’s Jan. 26 ruling dealt with then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s ability to dismiss claims that the district attorneys for Philadelphia and Allegheny County brought against the opioid companies who later signed a $26 billion multistate settlement, experts said the ruling could have implications in other areas of civil litigation where county and statewide attorneys may take different approaches, since other laws have similar language that let either office file suit.

“A lot of laws give concurrent jurisdiction to AGs and DAs to abate nuisances,” Chris Carusone of Cohen Seglias Pallas Greenhall & Furman PC, a former chief deputy attorney general now representing clients being investigated by state agencies, said via email.