First trial for pharmacies over role in opioid crisis

CLEVELAND — So many prescription painkillers were dispensed in Lake County, Ohio, between 2012 and 2016 that the amount equaled 265 pills for every resident. Just to the south, the flood of prescription opioids during the same period equated to 400 pills for every resident of Trumbull County.

Attorneys say efforts to address the ensuing overdose epidemic has cost each of the financially struggling counties at least $1 billion. Now those counties want major national pharmacy chains that were involved in much of that distribution to pay.

In a bellwether federal trial starting Monday in Cleveland, Lake and Trumbull counties will try to convince a jury that the retail pharmacy companies played an outsized role in creating a public nuisance in the way they dispensed pain medication into their communities.

This will be the first time pharmacy companies, in this case CVS, Walgreens, Giant

Eagle and Walmart, have gone to trial to defend themselves in the nation’s ongoing legal reckoning over the opioid crisis. The trial, which is expected to last around six weeks, could set the tone for similar lawsuits against retail pharmacy chains by government entities across the U.S.

The trial will center on the harm to the counties and the response by the pharmacy chains, which have argued in court filings that their pharmacists were merely filling prescriptions written by physicians for legitimate medical needs. The trial also has a human dimension, watched closely by those whose family members are part of the roughly 500,000 Americans whose deaths are attributed to opioid abuse over the past two decades.

The trial before U.S. District Judge Dan Polster is part of a broader constellation of federal opioid lawsuits — about 3,000 in all — that have been consolidated under the judge’s supervision.

The trial will be the fourth in the U.S. this year to test claims brought by governments against different players in the drug industry over the toll of prescription painkillers. Verdicts or judgments have not yet been reached in the others.

With trials ongoing and others queued up, many of the most prominent defendants have already reached settlements. Sometimes, they involve a small number of governments or just one defendant such as Rite Aid.