The Recorder: Why San Francisco’s Opioid Bench Trial Was a Rare Experience for Lieff Cabraser’s Richard Heimann

The Recorder has published an in-depth piece on Lieff Cabraser partner Richard M. Heiman highlighting his recent hard-fought work successfully representing the City of San Francisco in a landmark opioid bench trial against Walgreens pharmacy for its role in the City’s current drug crisis. In August 2022, the Court in the bench trial found Walgreens liable for substantially contributing to the opioid epidemic in San Francisco, making this the first such trial to decide in plaintiff’s favor in the national opioid litigation, and the first bench trial to find Walgreens liable.

“This was one of those rare cases where basically everything that we did, in terms of both the direct testimony that we put on and the cross-examination, went just as well as we could have hoped,” noted Richard.

Richard’s groundbreaking work on behalf of the City of San Francisco against opioid distributors is one of the matters that earned him a finalist spot for the California Legal Awards’ Attorney of the Year.

To read the full piece detailing Richard’s experience litigating San Francisco’s Opioid Bench Trial, visit The Recorder’s (subscription) website.

About Richard Heimann

A “lawyer’s lawyer,” Richard Heimann is one of the nation’s foremost trial attorneys, with extensive experience in complex securities, investor fraud and antitrust cases, including the historic settlements of the Wells Fargo and Boeing shareholder derivative suits, granted final approval in 2020 and 2022 respectively. Heimann has tried over 30 civil jury cases over more than four decades, and has served or serves as lead counsel in securities fraud actions including those against Petrobras, Navient, Wells Fargo, Merck, Bank of America, Schwab RMBS cases, LIBOR, Merrill Lynch, IndyMac, Broadcom, Tyco, Qwest, America Online, Peregrine, McKesson, Network Associates, Informix/Illustra, FPI/Agretech, California Micro Devices, and Scorpion I and II, representing both institutional and individual investors. In the spring of 2022, Heimann served as co-lead trial counsel in San Francisco’s successful bellwether opioids trial against manufacturers, distributors and dispensers of opioid drugs.