AG refiles against 3 opioid distributors
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter refiled separate state lawsuits against three opioid distribution companies Friday, accusing them of fueling the state's deadly opioid crisis by oversupplying the state with the highly addictive painkillers.
McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc. and Amer is our ce Bergen Corp. are accused of negligence and creating a public nuisance in the lawsuits that were filed in Bryan County District Court.
Motivated by “greed,” these companies “substantially contributed to fueling the opioid crisis supplying massive and patently unreasonable quantities of opioids to communities throughout the United States, including Oklahoma,” Hunter alleges in the lawsuits.
“By law, opioid distributors are required to stop suspicious shipments of opioids and report them to law enforcement,” Hunter said in a news release Friday. “These companies ignored their re sp on sibilities because they were making billions of dollars, while Oklahomans, especially those in our rural communities, suffered.
Even after warnings and paying hundreds of millions in settlements and fines for their behavior, the companies persisted. We must hold them accountable for this behavior and for the deaths and continued suffering that occurred from their actions.”
David Matthews, senior director of corporate relations for McKesson, issued a prepared statement Friday that said McKesson “play san important but limited role in the pharmaceutical supply chain, and anysuggestion that McKesson drove demand for opioid sin this country reflects a fundamental misunderstanding and mis characterization of our role as a distributor.”
“We will continue to fight that mis characterization and defend ourselves in the litigation,” he said.
The lawsuits seek unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and ask that the companies be ordered to return unjust profits.
Hunter filed a single state lawsuit against the same three opioid distributors last January in Cleveland County District Court, but dismissed that lawsuit in February after the drug distribution companies had the case moved to federal court. At the time, Hunter described the dismissal as a “strategic move.”
Friday, Hunter said here filed the case in Bryan County District Court because he believes that county “better represents the overwhelming number of overdose deaths and ongoing addiction crisis in the state's rural communities.”
In 2017, enough opio ids were dispensed to Bryan County residents for every adult to have the equivalent of 144 hydrocodone 10 milligram tablets, the attorney general's office said, adding that “between 2006 and 2014, t here were 24.1 million pain pills supplied to Bryan County. The three companies were responsible for supplying nearly 70% of those pills .” Bryan County is part of a cluster of counties that were hit hard by the opioid e pi demic, and among t hose counties, Bryan County has the resources to best handle a trial of this magnitude, the attorney general's office said.
Hunter previously filed lawsuits against a number of opioid manufacturers, winning a $465 million nonjury verdict last year in Cleveland County District Court against opioid manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries. That verdict by Cleveland County District Judge Th ad Balk mani snow under appeal at the Oklahoma Supreme Court.Several other opioid manufacturers have entered into settlement agreements with the attorney general within the past year, including a $270 million settlement reached by Purdue Pharma, an $85 million settlement by Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc., and an $8.75 million settlement by Endo Pharmaceuticals. Hunter did not sue opioid distributors in his initial lawsuit against manufacturers, but distributors have repeatedly been named in many of the more than 2,500 other lawsuits that have been filed across the country against opioid manufacturers and distributors. Many of those cases have been consolidated in a multi jurisdictional federal court case in Ohio where a global settlement in the billions of dollars is being sought.
The three com panies named in Friday's lawsuits have troubled histories and have “paid hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and fines for failing to monitor suspicious orders of opioids,” the attorney general's office said.
“Since 2008, McKesson has paid over $163 million for its failure to report suspicious orders, including a $150 million settlement with authorities in 2017, which is a record for a distributor,” the attorney general's office said in its news release.”Since 2008, Cardinal has paid nearly $100 million in multiple actions f rom authorities and state actions relating to its improper management and distribution of opioids to pharmacies across the United States,” the news release said. “At one point, authorities found that Cardinal' s own investigator warned the company against selling opioids to four pharmacies in Florida that requested a 241% increase of opioids in only two years. Cardinal did not notify authorities or cut off the supply. Instead, Cardinal's shipment of opioids to the pharmacies increased .” Recently, Amer is our ce Bergen paid $16 million as a result of a lawsuit for its role in the opioid epidemic. In 2007, the company actually lost its license to send controlled substances from one of i ts distribution centers due to a lack of control over shipments of prescription opioids.”
In Oklahoma, more than 6,000 Oklahomans have lost their lives from prescription opioid overdoses since 2000, the attorney general's office said.