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In a statement alleging that pharmaceutical companies fueled the opioid crisis, a federal judge ruled Monday that the country’s top three drug dealers did not cause public nuisance by sending millions of addictive pain pills to a Virginia community. Western which was one of the most affected.
In a legal victory for AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, Judge David A. Faber dismissed the argument of Cabell County and its headquarters, Huntington, that distributors were responsible for the consequences of an opioid flood. , according to the order of the judge presented. in the United States District Court in West Virginia.
Distributors have denied having been harmed and said the painkillers they sent were prescribed by licensed doctors and filled by pharmacies. They argued that they had no way of saying that those prescriptions were not legitimate and that any of the drugs could have been channeled to the black market.
The arguments of the distributors’ lawyers resonated with the judge, who ruled that the plaintiffs did not prove that the conduct of the companies was unreasonable, a key element in establishing a case of public nuisance. He found that the conduct of the companies could not be related to the harm suffered by the communities. Finally, it ruled that the plaintiffs did not devise a detailed reduction plan that would describe how communities would spend the money they received if imposed on the trial.
The increase in pills going to West Virginia was due in part, he said, to the “dispensation in good faith,” as well as to the increase in product thresholds set by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“The opioid crisis has significantly affected the citizens of Cabell County and the city of Huntington. And while there is a natural tendency to blame in these cases, they must be decided not on the basis of sympathy, but on the basis of the facts and the law, “Faber wrote in his sentence. “In view of the court’s findings and conclusions, the court finds that the sentence should be handed down in favor of the defendants.”
In the end, Faber ruled that the public nuisance statutes had been misapplied in the case.
“The extension of the nuisance law to cover the marketing and sale of opioids is inconsistent with the history and traditional notions of nuisance,” he wrote.
The decision comes nearly a year after the defendants’ lawyers and plaintiffs rested their case in a trial held before the judge last summer. Following the trial, the three distributors finalized a $ 21 billion national agreement with a large majority of states, counties and cities to resolve most of the lawsuits against them. The communities of West Virginia were not part of this agreement. The lawyers involved in the case said they were surprised at how long it took Faber to dictate his decision.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said they are considering an appeal.
“We are deeply disappointed personally and by the citizens of Cabell County and the City of Huntington,” plaintiffs ’attorneys said in a statement. “We felt that the evidence that emerged from witness statements, company documents and extensive data sets showed that these defendants were responsible for creating and overseeing the infrastructure that flooded West Virginia with opioids.”
Representatives of the pharmaceutical companies applauded Faber’s ruling.
“We remain deeply concerned about the impact the opioid crisis is having on families and communities across our country,” McKesson said in a statement. “McKesson maintains, and continuously improves, strong programs designed to detect and prevent opioid diversion within the pharmaceutical supply chain. We only distribute controlled substances, including opioids, to DEA-registered and state-licensed pharmacies.”
“We applaud the Court’s ruling, which recognizes what we demonstrated in court, which is that we do not manufacture, market or prescribe prescription drugs, but only provide a secure channel to deliver drugs of all kinds from manufacturers to our thousands of hospitals and hospitals. pharmacy customers who distribute them to their patients based on prescriptions ordered by the doctor, “Cardinal Health said in a statement.
AmerisourceBergen said in a statement: “We are pleased with the court’s decision to overturn the idea that the distribution of FDA-approved drugs to authorized and registered health care providers in Cabell County and the city of Huntington was a public nuisance “.
Before the coronavirus pandemic began, the West Virginia trial was to be key evidence of a new legal strategy in the extensive national litigation against companies, such as drug manufacturers and pharmacies. Huntington and Cabell County attorneys argued that companies shipped drugs regardless of the red flags that the pills could have been diverted to the black market, which had costly consequences for addiction-devastated communities. and the dead.
Although the pandemic delayed trials across the country and other lawsuits were settled with settlements, the West Virginia trial advanced. During the nearly three-month trial in Charleston in the summer of 2021, plaintiffs argued that companies should have been alarmed by the significant increase in drugs shipped to the Appalachian community during the height of the crisis. the pills.
In an eight-year period ending in 2014, there were more than 81 million prescription hydrocodone and oxycodone pills distributed in West Virginia County, enough for 94 pills for each adult and child per year. .
Lawyers representing Cabell and Huntington County asked for $ 2.6 billion from the three companies to strive to recover from the drug epidemic.
The judge’s decision comes after a California state judge and the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed the public harassment lawsuits. But the argument has prevailed elsewhere: in New York State Court, a jury ruled against Teva Pharmaceuticals after the state accused the Israel-based drug maker of engaging in misleading marketing practices. And in northern Ohio, a federal jury ruled in favor of communities arguing that major retail pharmacies (CVS, Walgreens and Walmart) allowed opioids to go into the wrong hands without control.
A West Virginia state court trial later concluded the state attorney general paid $ 99 million in April with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutical and $ 161.5 million with Teva Pharmaceuticals, AbbVie’s Allergan and others.
Paul Farrell, a West Virginia lawyer representing the communities, began his initial argument by referring to Eric Eyre’s Pulitzer Prize-winning report that the first revealed distributors sent 780 million pills to the state in a period of six years.
“This series of newspapers triggered a congressional investigation into the dumping of pills in West Virginia and has initiated what has been described as the most complex and largest litigation in the country’s history,” Farrell told the judge.
The massive wave of drugs also caught the attention of the DEA, according to Joe Rannazzisi, the former head of the Office of Deviation Control, who said the agency warned distributors to take a closer look at the its customers, especially “large quantities.” of controlled substances going downstream to pharmacies without any review, due diligence, proper reporting “.
“They were just sending,” he said.
After an increase in prescription opioid deaths, communities argued that users resorted to cheaper drugs on the street, leading to a worsening of the problem of overdose and addiction. During the trial, Huntington Mayor Steve Williams testified that he saw a 2014 SWAT raid on a large shipment of heroin delivered to a home in his hometown, realizing the seriousness of the problem and feeding his sense of urgency. Now, Williams said funds are needed to help tackle the worsening crisis.
“I’m not looking for a money grab,” he stated. “All I’m looking for is the ability to be able to make sure my community can be healed.”
In the previous decade, 1,100 people died from opioid overdoses in Cabell County, considered an epicenter of the crisis. In 2008, more West Virginia residents died from drug overdoses than from car accidents.
During the trial, Robert Nicholas, a lawyer for AmerisourceBergen, acknowledged the cost of the epidemic, but said the fault of the distributors is “misplaced” and “artificial.”
“No one in Cabell or Huntington County received a prescription for an opioid pain medication without a doctor,” Nicholas said.
County and city attorneys presented evidence that executives shed light on the public health crisis in emails. They questioned AmerisourceBergen executive Chris Zimmerman about a parody song about “pillbillies” addicted to OxyContin when he testified in May. Public outrage over the news of the email sparked death threats, according to the company’s lawyers.
“I shouldn’t have sent the email,” said Zimmerman, the company’s senior vice president and head of research. But he added that the exchange has been chosen and that AmerisourceBergen’s corporate culture was the “highest caliber”.
The father of an 18-year-old who died of an opioid overdose in 2001 used Twitter to denounce the verdict.
“NO Justice,” Ed Bisch wrote.