Massachusetts, Other States Ratchet Up Legal Action Against Opioid Manufacturers
Groups across the nation are targeting Purdue Pharma and other companies with lawsuits alleging misleading claims about the safety of opioid painkillers.
Over the past year, opioid manufacturers have faced a growing barrage of lawsuits from states and municipalities over the role the companies played in the opioid crisis.
Massachusetts in June filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, as well as 16 current and former executives at the company.
As with the numerous other cases of opioid litigation, the basis for Massachusetts’ suit is that Purdue and its executives deceptively promoted opioid-based pain medications (particularly OxyContin) despite knowing about the risks associated with long-term use of the medication.
“We found that Purdue engaged in a multibillion-dollar enterprise to mislead us about their drugs,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said at a news conference announcing the suit. “Purdue pushed prescribers to give higher doses to keep patients on drugs for longer periods of time, without regard to the very real risks of addiction, overdose, and death.”
The Massachusetts suit came one month after six other states (Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas) filed suits against Purdue. In total, Purdue now faces lawsuits by 24 states and the territory of Puerto Rico.
Similarly, more than 1,000 additional lawsuits from cities, counties, and Native American tribes have been brought against companies that make or distribute opioid medications. Besides Purdue, companies such as Janssen Pharmaceuticals (makers of Duragesic), Endo Health Solutions Inc. (makers of Percocet), and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (makers of Actiq) have been named in lawsuits.
To expedite the proceedings, over 400 of these lawsuits were combined by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) in December 2017 and handed over to the federal court for the Northern District of Ohio. The MDL panel chose this district in part because this region has been heavily affected by the opioid crisis.
The presiding judge, Dan Polster, scheduled the first trial—for the governments of the city of Cleveland and Ohio’s Cuyahoga and Summit counties against 11 opioid manufacturers/distributors—for March 18, 2019. In the meantime, he ordered both sides to begin settlement talks.
This forthcoming trial is not the first time Purdue has been in the legal crosshairs. Following years of legal battles with many states, Purdue eventually reached a settlement in 2007 and pled guilty to charges of misleading the public about the drug’s risks. Purdue and executives paid $634 million in fines, which were distributed to federal and state agencies, as well as individuals who had sued the company.
During the plea, company executives noted that since 2002—when Florida became the first state to probe Purdue’s marketing practices—they had implemented new training, monitoring, and compliance procedures to ensure that its employees would not misrepresent any drugs in the future. The recent lawsuits from Massachusetts and other states contend otherwise, stating that Purdue and other drug companies have continued to place profits over public health.
“We are disappointed that after months of good faith negotiations working toward a meaningful resolution to help these states address the opioid crisis, this group of attorneys general have unilaterally decided to pursue a costly and protracted litigation process,” the company said in the statement. ■
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Published online: 31 July 2018
Published in print: July 21, 2018 – August 3, 2018
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