District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. is suing the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office to stop the recently announced opioid settlement agreement reached between it and three pharmaceutical companies.

In the 24-page complaint filed Thursday in Commonwealth Court, the District Attorney’s Office contends Attorney General Josh Shapiro is improperly seeking to release opioid claims filed by Zappala’s office in a February lawsuit.

Zappala’s complaint against the attorney general alleges the settlement announced last week provides no guaranteed money to Allegheny County; that the amount the county will receive is not adequate to cover the vast loss of life and damage caused by the opioid epidemic; and that Shapiro does not have the authority to reach such an agreement on Allegheny County’s behalf.

According to the complaint, in the last five-and-a-half years, Allegheny County has had about 3,400 opioid deaths.

“Plaintiff has a direct and substantial interest in ensuring that its case is not rendered moot or otherwise usurped, particularly when the relief sought by the attorney general is in plaintiff’s view inadequate, and differs in substance from the relief sought by the district attorneys,” the lawsuit said.

In April 2016, Shapiro, who was then a Montgomery County commissioner, beat Zappala in the Democratic primary for state attorney general.

Shapiro went on to win the seat in November of that year.

The complaint filed Thursday alleges the district attorney and attorney general have co-equal authority under the Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law and that Shapiro’s settlement “would create a situation where entities acting in the name of the commonwealth are pitted against each other in a race to the bottom to settle first and settle low, to the detriment of those who have been harmed by defendants’ unfair or deceptive conduct and to the great benefit of those who engage in unfair trade practices.”

However, a spokeswoman for Shapiro said Zappala’s action is unwarranted.

“This is a copycat of a Philadelphia lawsuit that misleads Pennsylvanians and would rob Allegheny County residents of their fair share of a billion dollars to fight the opioid epidemic,” said AG spokeswoman Molly Stieber. “The DA’s plan is to start years of risky, drawn-out litigation that would deny Western Pennsylvanians the treatment options they need now, with no realistic plan for success. Meanwhile, the proposed settlement could provide an influx of $232 million to Pennsylvanians by next year.”

According to Shapiro’s office, Pennsylvania would receive $1 billion if every community agrees to the proposal. Each county and township has five months to decide if they want to participate.

If they all sign on, the AG’s office said, Pennsylvania would started receiving money from the settlement in April — up to $232 million in the first year.

On July 21, Shapiro announced an agreement that would have three of the nation’s leading pharmaceutical distributors and a major pharmaceutical manufacturer pay up to $26 billion — with Pennsylvania in line to get as much as $1 billion that must be used only to address opioid addiction.

The companies involved are McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Corp. and AmeriSource Bergen Drug Corp., as well as Johnson & Johnson.

In 2017, Shapiro joined with a group of other attorneys general across the country to investigate the opioid epidemic.

At the time, he said: “We’re following the evidence wherever it leads so we can change behavior and save lives. Make no mistake: if the law was broken, this team will find it, and we will take action to change the course of this epidemic. … We will follow the facts and the law, without fear or favor, and hold the responsible persons and companies accountable for the tragic loss of life and damage suffered by so many families across our Commonwealth.”

Zappala alleges in his lawsuit Shapiro never reported any findings from the investigation and instead announced two years later a $48 billion settlement.

That deal, however, was rejected by the majority of state attorneys general who found it to be inadequate.

In the meantime, Zappala’s office filed a lawsuit against several pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors Feb. 3 in Commonwealth Court under the state Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law.

Several other district attorneys across Pennsylvania have done the same, including ones in Philadelphia, Berks, Bucks, Chester, Dauphin, Delaware, Erie, Lehigh, Northampton and Westmoreland counties.

“The opioid addiction crisis has ravaged Allegheny County, the commonwealth and the nation,” according to Thursday’s complaint. “Much of the blame for this crisis falls at the feet of opioid manufacturers who marketed and promoted dangerous and addictive opioids, which only should have only been used to treat short-term acute pain, as being suitable to treat long-term chronic pain, causing a catastrophic increase in opioid addiction.”

Zappala alleges in the February lawsuit certain manufacturers and distributors “engaged in ‘unfair methods of competition’ and ‘unfair or deceptive acts or practices.’ ”

In the complaint filed Thursday against the Attorney General’s office, Zappala alleges Shapiro is improperly attempting to release all of the county’s claims against the corporations.

“The attorney general has no authority to unilaterally moot or otherwise settle the cases of district attorneys.”

Citing language from Shapiro’s settlement agreement, the lawsuit said the releases are intended to be broad and unlawfully release the companies from liability they could face in other cases.

“This agreement shall be a complete bar to any released claim,” the settlement paperwork said.

Allegheny County’s lawsuit comes on the heels of another filed last week by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office against Shapiro the day after the settlement was announced.

In Krasner’s case, his office filed a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers under the Unfair Trade Practices law in 2018.

“The proposed settlement announced yesterday is unacceptable: Any money Philadelphia receives from it will be too low in amount, too slow in payment, or a no-show — may not even arrive in Philly,” Krasner said in a news release. “Cities and municipalities in other states are taking these companies to court. They are winning, and winning much larger amounts that must be paid quickly and are guaranteed.”

Allegheny County’s complaint cites some of those other governmental entities that have either gone to trial or negotiated their own settlements, including the state of Oklahoma winning a $465 million judgment against Janssen following a bench trial, and two other counties in Ohio negotiating settlements of more than $325 million.

Shapiro’s office, however, called it misleading for Zappala to cite the Oklahoma and Ohio cases.

The Oklahoma judgment is still on appeal, and the Ohio settlement amounts to less money per person than what Pennsylvania would get under the proposed agreement Shapiro announced.

In Ohio, the settlement only applies to Cuyahoga and Summit counties and works out to an average of $68 per person based on population, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office said. The $1 billion amount in Pennsylvania would average $78 per person.

Bruce Ledewitz, an expert in Pennsylvania Constitutional law who teaches at Duquesne University, said a consideration in negotiating any settlement is how much money is being offered.

“In general, for the plaintiff’s side, you always have the possibility you could get more later versus what they’re offering now,” he said. “You have to make a judgment, and it’s hard to know what’s the potential recovery, and what are the chances of winning and how long will it take?”

In cases like the ones involving opioids, Ledewitz said, those questions are even harder because there is little in the way of precedent.

“It’s not a slam dunk that you get any money at all,” he said.

In the lawsuit filed Thursday by Zappala, he is asking the Commonwealth Court to issue a declaratory judgment finding the attorney general has no authority to release or subsume the Allegheny County claims.

Ledewitz said there is no doubt Zappala has the legal authority to object to the attorney general’s settlement precluding the DA’s pharmaceutical company lawsuit.

But that doesn’t mean he’ll prevail. Instead, Ledewitz believes, in terms of representing the people of Allegheny County — and accepting or rejecting inclusion in the settlement — that right should fall on Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

“If Fitzgerald signs off on the attorney general’s settlement, then that should bind all of the county’s elected officials,” Ledewitz said, including Zappala.

A spokewoman for Fitzgerald said the county would not comment on the ongoing issue.

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