California files Purdue Pharma lawsuit
Legal move against OxyContin maker latest in fight against opioids
STAMFORD — California announced Monday that it was suing Purdue Pharma and one of its owners, joining Maine, Hawaii and the District of Columbia in the latest wave of lawsuits that allege the OxyContin maker fueled the opioid crisis with deceptive marketing of its pain drugs.
The torrent of litigation comes from prosecutors who blame Purdue and members of the Sackler family who own the company for exacerbating an epidemic of opioid abuse that has seen some 218,000 Americans die from overdoses related to prescription opioids since
1999. In total, Purdue faces more than
1,000 active complaints, including 45 from states and hundreds filed by cities and counties.
“The opioid crisis is devastating our communities and killing our loved ones. Purdue Pharma and (defendant) Dr. (Richard) Sackler started the fire and then poured gasoline on the opioid crisis with practices that were irresponsible, unconscionable and unlawful,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Purdue’s deliberate and deceptive marketing and sale of these drugs sacrificed the well-being of Californians for billions of dollars in profits and fueled an unprecedented national public health crisis. We will continue to hold accountable those who put profits over people.”
Purdue has denied the lawsuits’ allegations.
“These complaints are part of a continuing effort to try these cases in the court of public opinion rather than the justice system,” the statement said. “The states cannot link the conduct alleged to the harm described, and so they have invented stunningly overbroad legal theories, which if adopted by courts, will undermine the bedrock legal principle of causation.”
A message left for a spokesperson of Richard Sackler, Purdue’s president and CEO in the early 2000s, was not immediately returned.
The past month has marked one of the busiest periods in the past couple of years for Purdue-related litigation.
Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin each sued in May.
Idaho, Michigan and Nebraska remain the only states not to have announced lawsuits against Purdue in the past few years.