Polster mediated a settlement between the city of Cleveland and the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who was killed by a white police officer in 2014.

[4] Polster mediated a settlement between the city of Cleveland and the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who was killed by a white police officer in 2014.

[6] The settlement meant that there would not be answers to some of the questions raised in the civil lawsuit, including whether dispatchers passed along sufficient information to the police and whether the department erred in hiring the officer who killed Rice.

[7][8] In February 2017, Polster said that comments made by Donald Trump criticizing federal judges called the president's legitimacy into question.

[13] The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit granted an injunction against Polster's ruling, leaving the ultimate decision to be made after election day.

The New York Times reported that many lawyers on both sides "were scathing, questioning his grasp of the issues and predicting that a stepped-up timetable was bound to collapse.

"[10][17] In September 2019, attorneys for eight drug distributors sought to disqualify Polster from the case, saying his public comments about his intention to get plaintiffs help showed evidence of bias.

[22] An investigation by Reuters "showed that Polster has been more willing to seal documents than other judges involved in opioid litigation, raising concerns that important information about the crisis remains secret.

[24][25] In April 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a sharp rebuke of Polster, writing that his pretrial ruling allowing plaintiffs to add new claims more than a year after the deadline was a "clear abuse of discretion.

"[26] Judge Raymond Kethledge wrote that multidistrict litigation is "not some kind of judicial border country, where the rules are few and the law rarely makes an appearance.

[30] Legal Newsline wrote that in doing so, Polster "demonstrated why plaintiff lawyers love the strategy so much: Because it is extremely effective at extracting settlements from the companies they sue.

Writing for National Review, Jack Fowler said "Somewhat off America's radar screen is a legal case, of the huge-implications variety, that is not only vast and complex but also a nose-thumbing to those (naïvely?)

"[32] In The Wall Street Journal, Yale law professor Abbe Gluck wrote, "What began as a single opioid lawsuit in Ohio is now the only such case that matters.

Gluck asked, "Is a federal courtroom, presided over by a single judge, a better forum for making policy than 50 state legislatures or Congress?

[38][39] On November 23, 2021, the jury found CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart liable for creating a public nuisance by contributing to the U.S. opioid crisis.