MONROE — State Attorney General Bob Ferguson visited the Monroe Rotary Club’s meeting last week to explain the office’s role and speak to some of its work.
The office sues on behalf of residents to defend consumer protection laws, advocates for children in child-protection cases and provides legal guidance and defense to departments in the state government.
For example, the state’s trial against opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharmaceuticals goes to court in February. It seeks damages for Purdue’s spread of OxyContin which helped fuel the opioid crisis.
He held off adding Purdue’s owners, the Sackler family, to the lawsuit because that would protract the trial timeline, he said.
Ferguson said the office also rejected a settlement offer from Purdue because it would have left the Sackler family as billionaires.
In pursuing the trial, he said he’s balancing accountability versus a quick settlement that would benefit state coffers. “I feel it’s important for accountability on this,” he told the 20 or so people at the Rotary meeting.
There are 600 attorneys working in the state AG’s office. About 100 of them work specifically as advocates in child dependency cases.
Ferguson noted half of the cases are because of opioid addiction.
The office also handles 20,000 consumer complaints annually.
Ferguson cannot change state law, but can file recommendations to Legislators. One proposal on opioid abuse is to require medical professionals check a database on patient history before writing a prescription for painkillers. This proposal didn’t pass in the Legislature.
The AG’s office has also filed 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration together with other states. He says he’s won 22 cases that have now concluded; The Los Angeles Times reported last week that 13 of these cases are beyond the point of being able to be appealed. Ferguson is prideful that he considers it a 100 percent win rate.
Ferguson explained there’s a three-part test he uses before deciding to file a case against the federal government: One, does the office have a legal argument; two, are Washingtonians harmed by the policy; and three, does the AG’s office have standing to file a lawsuit.
Merely his “personal opposition (to an issue) does not stand for a lawsuit,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson is an elected Democrat, but noted most of his staff have been around a long time, working under Republican Rob McKenna and before that under Christine Gregoire when she was the state’s Attorney General during the 1990s and early 2000s. Gregoire, the state’s former governor, is a Democrat.
