PROFILE
Fitzpatrick Leads National Opioid Litigation
Tiger Nation
By Penelope Hoopes
Laura Fitzpatrick serves on the team in a jury trial against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
“It was a huge legal victory and set the precedent of success for future trials.”
When Laura Fitzpatrick (2006 BACH H&SS) graduated from LSU, little did she know that fifteen years later she would play an integral role on the legal teams that kick-started the ongoing legal trials to hold pharmaceutical makers, distributors, and pharmacies accountable for their roles in creating and perpetuating the opioid epidemic.
Fitzpatrick, a shareholder at Simmons Hanly Conroy in the Complex Litigation Department, is serving on the trial team representing Suffolk County in the first jury trial of its kind in the New York State litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors. The trial has already resulted in several multi-million dollar settlements that will fund desperately needed opioid abatement, treatment, and recovery programs at the community level. The opioid crisis is one of the worst public health crises in U.S. history, and trials like the one in New York State are massively
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consequential for the country. She also serves on the trial team that most recently secured a verdict against three of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains, as a jury found they substantially contributed to the crisis of opioid overdoses and deaths in two Ohio counties as part of the third bellwether trial in the National Prescription Opiate Litigation. Fitzpatrick credits her experience with the LSU’s Kappa Delta sorority in supporting the organization Prevent Child Abuse America as a major milestone in her desire to fight for those who don’t have a voice. It opened her eyes to the trauma and suffering of children and families who have been the victims of abuse and the largely unmet need to provide children and their families with a path to healing and justice. Fitzpatrick earned a juris doctorate from Tulane Law School in 2009. She passed the Louisiana bar and stayed in Louisiana to work, first as a judicial extern to federal judge Carl J. Barbier in the Eastern District of Louisiana, then as a law clerk for federal judge Tucker L. Melancon in the Western District. Fitzpatrick joined Simmons Hanly Conroy in 2013 and was promoted to shareholder in 2020. She became proficient in the areas of complex class action and multidistrict litigation and served on the firm’s prescription opiate multidistrict litigation trial team, helping secure $325 million in settlements for two Ohio counties. It was a huge legal victory and set the precedent of success for future trials, many of which are taking place today. Penelope Hoopes is a junior account executive at Sunshine Sachs.