Abstract
Between 2017 and 2020, something unprecedented happened in the United States. Over half of the country’s counties filed lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors, seeking to recover the staggering costs of an epidemic that has claimed more than half a million lives since 2001. The lawsuits were a form of “affirmative litigation” – legal action in which a government entity sues a corporation on behalf of its constituents. What makes this remarkable is that, for local government attorneys, this kind of aggressive legal action had always been considered outside their professional role. County and city attorneys defend their jurisdictions against lawsuits; they do not typically go after powerful companies. And yet, in a matter of months, they did exactly that – en masse.