Sabrina H. Strong

Strong said defending AEG Live in the Michael Jackson wrongful death case was the trial of a lifetime.

But last year, another such opportunity came when she tried the first case that went to trial out of the massive opioid litigation for client Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

Strong and her team won favorable settlements for the company in Ohio, where lawsuits from two counties seeking $8 billion were talked down to $20.4 million. In re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation, 17-md-2804 (N.D. Ohio, Eastern Division, Filed, Dec. 12, 2017). Her client agreed to contribute $5.4 million to non-profits that work on opioid-related issues.

In another case Strong took to trial, the state of Oklahoma claimed J&J was liable for its opioid abuse crisis and sought a $17.7 billion "abatement" plan spanning 30 years. Oklahoma ex rel. Hunter v. Purdue Pharma LP, CJ-2017-816 (District Court of Cleveland County, filed June 30, 2017).

Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman sided with the attorney general, but trimmed the abatement figure to $572 million, which was reduced to $465 million after O'Melveny flagged a math error. In his decision, Balkman wrote that the plaintiff failed to present sufficient evidence J&J needed to pay more than the reduced amount.

Strong said she's disappointed in the outcome, even with a lower figure.

"I think it helps explain the impropriety of what the plaintiffs were doing and what they were seeking here," she said. "[I] think this case implicates broader questions about the proper limits of the law, where plaintiffs seek inappropriately to blame one set of actors for complex public health and social issues."

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter's lawsuit alleged J&J created a public nuisance, but Strong contests that claim.

"They are using public nuisance law in a way that it's never been recognized in the past hundred years of case law in Oklahoma," she said.

-- Arin Mikailian