Beaver County suing opioid painkiller firms, doctors
Attorney plans to file more cases this year
Long one of the regions hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, Western Pennsylvania now has a horse in the nationwide race to force pharmaceutical companies to pony up for the local costs of the worsening drug crisis.
Beaver County has joined two other Pennsylvania counties, and many more state and local governments nationwide, by suing 23 companies and people associated with surging prescribing of narcotics. Robert Peirce, the Pittsburgh attorney representing the county, said on Monday that he is also meeting with Fayette, Washington, Lawrence and Greene counties about filing similar cases this year.
“The drug companies and the distributors who we are suing knew that these drugs were addictive and they kept pumping them into the mainstream of these small towns and these counties,” he said.
The defendants are Purdue Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions, Allergan, Actavis, Watson Pharmaceuticals, McKesson, Cardinal Health, Amerisource Bergen, subsidiaries of some of those firms, and five allied physicians.
The complaint accuses them of deceptive acts, fraud, unjust enrichment, negligence, misrepresentation and public nuisance, seeking in return compensatory damages, punitive damages and the county’s legal costs.
Purdue Pharma denied the accusations in the lawsuit, adding in a statement that it is “deeply troubled by the opioid crisis” and “dedicated to being part of the solution.” The company wrote that it must preserve patient access to medication “while working collaboratively to solve this public health challenge” through
measures like distributing abuse-deterrent painkillers and sharing prescribing guidelines.
Robert Peirce & Associates is working with the New York firm of Marc J. Bern and Partners, and the lawsuit mirrors those filed in Lackawanna and Delaware counties.
Mr. Peirce said local governments are pursuing this because the federal government has been compromised by the pharmaceutical industry, citing reporting Sunday by “60 Minutes” and the Washington Post. “They can buy the feds, maybe, but they can’t buy the local communities,” he said.
The complaint in Beaver County Common Pleas Court cites the quadrupling of opioid prescribing in the early 2000s, the billions in profits from Purdue Pharma’s Oxy Contin alone, the 2 million Americans dependent on prescription narcotics, and some 500,000 fatal overdoses nationally since 2000.
It says Beaver County spends millions annually on emergency responses, police overtime, increased incarceration and treatment, including for people who started with prescription narcotics and moved on to heroin and fentanyl. With just over 170,000 residents, Beaver County had 102 fatal overdoses last year, according to the Pennsylvania Opioid Overdose Reduction Technical Assistance Center.
Allegheny County saw 650 drug deaths last year. A spokeswoman said that county is weighing a lawsuit.
Beaver County’s lawsuit is one in a growing number of cases brought against painkiller manufacturers and distributors by local and state governments. At least six states have sued firms over their opioid marketing practices, and Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, has joined 40 of his colleagues in an investigation of most of the companies named in the Beaver County lawsuit.
In other states, the drug firms have argued that because they got approval for their actions from the federal Food and Drug Administration, lower governments are pre-empted from challenging them.
Mr. Peirce said Beaver County won’t pay any fee up front, but if there’s a recovery, the lawyers will get 25 percent.
Rich Lord: rlord@postgazette.com, 412-263-1542 or on Twitter @richelord