City of Milwaukee joins federal opioid lawsuit
Milwaukee officials have announced that the city is joining a sprawling federal lawsuit against opioid drug manufacturers and distributors that are accused of fueling the opioid epidemic.
The city asserts that manufacturers of the painkillers “drastically” expanded the market for the drugs and their own market share using a “massive false marketing campaign” and that manufacturers and distributors “reaped enormous financial rewards by refusing to monitor and restrict the improper distribution of those drugs.”
The companies put profits over lives, the 300-page complaint states.
Milwaukee has been hit particularly hard by the opioid epidemic, with “excessive” rates of drug overdose and emergency room visits, strained budgets and increased criminal charges related to the diversion of the painkillers, the complaint states. In 2018, there were 790 emergency room visits related to opioids in Milwaukee County.
The defendants “chose profit over prudence and the safety of the community, and an award of punitive damages is appropriate as punishment and a deterrence,” the complaint states.
The city is also arguing for other damages, attorneys’ fees, court-enforced corrective action and other forms of relief.
The City Attorney’s Office retained New York law firm Napoli Shkolnik to represent the city in the litigation that is being heard in federal district court in Ohio.
“The city will incur no costs or fees unless it receives a successful recovery by settlement or trial,” the City Attorney’s Office said in a statement Thursday.
Milwaukee County is also a plaintiff in the case and is one of the national settlement class representatives, a critical designation that gives the county a lead role in trying to structure a national settlement.
As part of that lawsuit, Drug Enforcement Administration data were released showing that across the U.S., drug companies distributed 76 billion prescription oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills between 2006 and 2012.
More than 310 million of those pills were supplied to Milwaukee County pharmacies in that time, enough for 47 pills per person, every year, according to DEA data analyzed by the Washington Post.
On a pills-per-person measure, Milwaukee County was among the top Wisconsin counties.
“Plaintiff brings this suit to bring the devastating march of this epidemic to a halt and to hold Defendants responsible for the crisis they caused,” the city’s complaint states.