County of El Paso to join lawsuit against opioid manufacturers

El Paso County Commissioners unanimously voted to join a lawsuit against several pharmaceutical companies for their alleged role in contributing to the opioid crisis.

The County of El Paso had been debating for months whether to join an on-going lawsuit. County Judge, Ruben Vogt, told ABC-7 they received four presentations from different law firms across the state. The county ultimately decided to go with the Gallagher Law Firm, which is based out of Houston.

Vogt says this lawsuit will not cost the tax payer anything. “Given the fact that there’s no expense to the tax payers, this was somewhat of a no-brainer for us to ensure that we were doing our due diligence to see if El Paso county was being affected by the crisis that’s occurring nationally,” Vogt told ABC-7.

The County has agreed to offer the Gallagher Law Firm 30-percent of any award that is given out as a result of the lawsuit, and the county will keep the other 70-percent. If there is no award, the county is not required to pay the law firm.

The Gallagher Law Firm first made a presentation to the county in October. In its presentation the firm said it would go after six pharmaceutical companies. Those six companies included Johnson & Johnson.

The firm will be sending researchers down to El Paso County at the start of 2018 and try to quantify the effects of the opioid crisis here locally.

“Every community will be impacted differently, we just don’t know to what severity El Paso county has been hit.” Vogt said.

Harris County and Bexar County have also joined the Gallagher Law firm’s suit.