Publix is suing Cobb over opioid suit filed by county
Publix sued Cobb County this week over the county government’s involvement in an opioid lawsuit, alleging the county improperly hired a trio of outside law firms to sue the supermarket chain over its distribution of prescription drugs.
Filed in Cobb Superior Court, the suit suggests the county was “lured” into the opioid litigation by the firms’ “promises of a windfall,” and alleges the county violated multiple laws when it brought them on nearly five years ago.
Cobb filed an initial suit in July 2018 against a number of drug manufacturers and pharmacies including Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, CVS, Kroger, and Walmart. It alleged the opioid crisis arose from “the opioid manufacturers’ deliberately deceptive marketing strategy to expand opioid use, together with the distributors’ equally deliberate efforts to evade restrictions on opioid distribution.”
Then in March 2019, the suit broadened to include the Sackler family, which founded and owned Purdue Pharma, and additional firms including Publix.
The suit alleged drugs sold by Publix — one of the county’s 10 largest employers — made up “a substantial market share” in Cobb.
“Publix’s conduct thus directly caused the worst manmade epidemic in modern medical history — the misuse, abuse, and over-prescription of opioids across this country, including in this
jurisdiction,” the opioid suit says.
Publix’s litigation filed this week argues otherwise, saying that even the Publix pharmacy in Cobb which dispensed the highest number of opioids doesn’t rank in the county’s top 35 distributors.
The main concern of the new lawsuit, however, is not the merits of the opioid litigation, but the manner in which the county hired firms Simmons Hanly Conroy, Crueger Dickinson, and von Briesen & Roper.
The litigation says county leaders improperly decided to hire the firms in executive session with no public record, that the county improperly delegated the handling of the original opioid lawsuit to a private firm, and that the firms hold a conflict of interest in
that they represent a number of jurisdictions across the country; thus, they cannot be expected to act solely in Cobb’s best interests.
Throughout the filing, Publix implies Cobb was goaded into joining the opioid lawsuit by the law firms.
“Cobb County’s hiring nonGeorgia private lawyers to participate in complicated federal court litigation hundreds of miles away is all about money,” the new suit says.
It also claims that per the contract, the firms will collectively receive 25% of the total settlement awarded to the county.
The county declined to provide a copy of the contract with the three firms without an open records request, which the MDJ has filed.