Pill peddlers
For the second time in as many months, a jury handed down a verdict finding pharmaceutical production and distribution companies directly liable for fomenting the nation’s opioid overdose crisis. This is progress. The first verdict came in a November federal case in Ohio, where a jury found pharmacy giants CVS Health, Walmart and Walgreens responsible for contributing to the opioid epidemic in two counties. Then, last Thursday in Suffolk County, a jury in a joint state-local lawsuit has now provided the first state-level verdict, with Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and related entities found guilty of creating a “public nuisance,” a novel legal strategy used to draw an accountability nexus between the companies’ actions and the crisis.
The lawsuit started off with many more defendants, most of whom settled out over the months of the trial, committing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars towards mitigating the horrors of opioid overprescription and overuse around the state (if state authorities ever get around to appointing the board tasked with making funding recommendations). What Teva is on the hook for will now be decided by the judge, though the company has already indicated it intends to appeal.
These payments are necessary and welcome. Just as important are the juries’ affirmations that these corporations and their executives are directly at fault for this catastrophe after deciding to push powerful pharmaceuticals in what they knew was an unsafe manner. Teva might object to some of the plaintiffs’ legal strategies — its lawyers attempted to have a mistrial declared over objections that comedic internal videos pushing drug sales were parodies and not real training materials — but at base, the people’s lawyers proved they acted with willful negligence to public health in order to bolster their bottom line.
This verdict now provides fuel to other ongoing state and federal trials. Let it be a sign to the many companies that got rich off obscuring the dangers of opioids: Get ready to pay up to help remedy some of the wrongs you caused.