Walmart sues U. S. over policy on opioids

Government has no lawful basis to seek penalties, retailer says.

Walmart issuing the U.S. government in a pre-emptive strike in the battle over its responsibility in the opioid abuse crisis.

The government is expected to take civil action against the world’s largest retailer, seeking big financial penalties, for the role its pharmacies may have played in the crisis by filling opioid prescriptions.

But on Thursday, Walmart filed a lawsuit saying that the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration are blaming the company for the government’ s own lack of regulatory and enforcement policies to stem the crisis.

Walmart says it is seeking a declaration from a federal judge that the government has no lawful basis for seeking civil damages from the company. It is also seeking to clarify its legal rights and duties under the Controlled Substance Act.

Walmart operates more than 5,000 pharmacies in its stores around the country.

“Walmart and its pharmacists find themselves in an untenable position,” the company based in Bentonville, Ark., says in the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas. “Under defendants’ sweeping view, Walmart and its pharmacists may be held liable — perhaps even criminally — for failing to second- guess DEA- registered doctors and refuse their prescriptions. But if pharmacists do so, theymay face the wrath of state medical boards, the medical community at large, individual doctors and patients.”

Walmart says in the suit that the Justice Department identified hundreds of doctors who have written problematic prescriptions that Walmart’s pharmacists allegedly should not have filled. But nearly 70% continue to have active registrations with the DEA, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuitnames the Justice Department and Attorney GeneralWilliam Barr as defendants. It alsonamesthe DEA and its acting administrator, Timothy Shea.

In the suit, Walmart describes a government probe of the company that began in December 2016 and calls it a “misguided criminal investigation” conducted by the U. S. Attorney’sOffice for the Eastern District of Texas. Walmart says it fully cooperated with the probe.

In the spring of 2018, the officeadvised that it intended to indict the company. In August 2018, Walmart said that Justice officials recognized that therewas no plausible basis for a criminal indictment, and the department formally declined to prosecuteWalmart. But the civil investigation continued.