Making drugmakers pay for opioid crisis
Walsh wants in on lawsuit to recoup costs
Mayor Martin J. Walsh is putting pharmaceutical companies “on notice” and is looking to join cities and towns across the country in a massive lawsuit that could recoup the costs of dealing with the opioid epidemic that has killed thousands across the Bay State.
The city will ask private attorneys and researchers to help develop a legal strategy to sue pharmaceutical companies that flooded the market with opioids, Walsh said. The request will be released in early February and Walsh said he expected a “fast turnaround.”
“We have to use everything, every tool we can, to fight back in this crisis,” Walsh said. “This is another way of putting pharmaceutical companies on notice.”
Walsh said he would not know the potential cost to the city until he saw responses to the request. He declined to name companies the city would target but huge drugmakers like Purdue Pharma have already seen lawsuits from Massachusetts cities, including Methuen and Woburn.
Richard Sandman, an attorney with Rodman, Rodman & Sandman, is working on several of those lawsuits and said while they are not class-action — cities and towns are seeking different damages — the lawsuits are being consolidated in federal court.
The suits are charging companies with continuing to pump drugs into markets that would not appear to support high sales volume, leading to more opioids being sold to feed addictions instead of for medical reasons.
“Companies and manufacturers flooded the markets, they should be the ones who bear a lot of responsibility to clean up the mess they made,” Sandman said.
He said cities are looking to recoup money that fighting the opioid epidemic has taken from their budgets — from costs of naloxone to overtime for police, fire and emergency responders, to the potential loss of business due to concerns over blight from addicts.
“There’s a lot of time spent on the damages model, it’s not just based on what population you have and how many died — it has to go far deeper than that,” Sandman said, adding his firm would likely respond to Boston’s request.
“The opioid crisis has already been a big cost to the city, from people dying to emergency services — it’s hit every aspect of life,” Walsh said.
Walsh compared the series of lawsuits to the enormous series of suits against tobacco companies that eventually resulted in Massachusetts receiving an $8 billion settlement. Sandman agreed that the lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies could reach that scale, but said it could take years for any settlement or judgment to be reached.
Purdue Pharma — in responding to multiple lawsuits — has said that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin for use as a painkiller and approved the safety warnings.