J&J, different drugmakers go to trial in California in $50 billion case over ‘deadly legacy’ of opioids

Four drugmakers helped trigger the lethal U.S. opioid epidemic by deceptively advertising their medication and downplaying their addictive dangers, a lawyer for a number of California counties argued on Monday firstly of a multibillion-dollar trial.
Those counties accuse Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (TEVA.TA), Endo International Plc (ENDP.O) and AbbVie Inc’s (ABBV.N) Allergan unit of fueling a drug disaster that in accordance with the U.S. authorities resulted in almost 500,000 opioid overdose deaths over twenty years.
The populous Santa Clara, Los Angeles and Orange counties and town of Oakland say that ought to a choose following the non-jury, digital trial discover the drugmakers liable, they need to must pay greater than $50 billion to cowl the prices of abating the general public nuisance they created, plus penalties.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Fidelma Fitzpatrick, instructed Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson that the case was concerning the corporations’ “deadly legacy” of selling opioid painkillers to deal with continual ache, leading to a “mountain” of addictive tablets flooding the state and nation.
“The evidence will show each of these companies, all of them, knew what would happen: that their opioids would cause the crushing burden of addiction, overdose and death that California and its people have experienced,” she mentioned.
Defense attorneys countered that their medication have been a small a part of the general opioid market, that medical doctors have been warned of their dangers and that the counties couldn’t show they triggered the well being disaster.
“You won’t hear from a single doctor who was ever misled,” Collie James, Teva’s lawyer.
Mike Yoder, J&J’s lawyer, mentioned its painkillers, which it now not markets, have been not often abused. “They did not cause any opioid crisis, and they did not cause any public nuisance,” he mentioned.
John Hueston, Endo’s lawyer, mentioned the California communities have been litigating over a handful of “innocuous statements” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration accepted.
“That’s game over,” he mentioned. “Under the law, whatever the FDA says was gospel.”
More than 3,300 related lawsuits are pending nationally over the opioid disaster. The solely different case to go to trial within the opioid litigation resulted within the state of Oklahoma in 2019 successful a $465 million judgment in opposition to J&J, which is interesting.

Other instances are slated to go to trial within the coming months, creating new strain for the businesses to succeed in settlements.

The nation’s three largest drug distributors – McKesson Corp (MCK.N), AmerisourceBergen Corp (ABC.N) and Cardinal Health Inc (CAH.N) – and J&J have proposed paying a mixed $26 billion to resolve the instances in opposition to them. The proposed deal has not been finalized.