Not long after that, a Spokane doctor named Merle Janes sued L&I. Dr. Janes was assisted by five law firms, four of which were from outside Washington State. The guideline, they alleged in a court brief, was an example of “an extreme anti-opioid discriminatory animus or zealotry known as Opiophobia that informs, permeates, and perniciously corrupts the development and management of public health policy” in Washington. So L&I’s prescribing guidelines hung in limbo for two years. Twenty-five workers, each of whom had gone to a workers’ comp doc with an injury, died of opiate overdoses in 2008;
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