Edited by: JV Staff
Pharmaceutical giant, Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $572 million to the state of Oklahoma in the first court case to find a drug company responsible for fueling the opioid crisis in the US.
The company was sued by Oklahoma and, in a landmark ruling, a judge said it had contributed to a “public nuisance” through deceptive promotion of highly addictive prescription painkillers, according to a Yahoo News report.
The case was tried for seven weeks in Oklahoma. Presiding on the case was Judge Thad Balkman. “Those actions compromised the health and safety of thousands of Oklahomans. The opioid crisis is an imminent danger and menace to Oklahomans. It has ravaged the state of Oklahoma. It must be abated immediately,” he said.
This particular case was the first case to reach the courts and thousands more are being brought against pharmaceutical companies by state and local governments, according to a Yahoo News report.
In October, a judge in Ohio will hear 2000 consolidated civil actions.
Not happy with the verdict of the court, Johnson & Johnson said it would appeal the Oklahoma decision.
Prior to hearing the Johnson & Johnson case, the state of Oklahoma had already reached a $270 million settlement with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and an $85 million settlement with Israeli-owned Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, according to a Yahoo News report.
During the course of the trial, the government argued that J&J was not being above board with consumers. The charged J&J with carrying out a protracted marketing campaign that lacked honesty and forthrightness as it pertained to the pharma giant downplaying the addiction risks of its painkillers and overstating their supposed effects on chronic pain.
The state’s lawyers called the company an opioid “kingpin” motivated by greed.
They argued that Johnson & Johnson’s marketing efforts created a “public nuisance” as doctors over-prescribed the drugs, leading to a surge in overdose deaths.
Yahoo News reported that a total of 4,653 people died from opioid overdoses in Oklahoma from 2007 to 2017, according to the state government.
Lawyers for Johnson & Johnson had denied wrongdoing, arguing that the company’s marketing claims had scientific support and that its painkillers, Duragesic and Nucynta, accounted for only a tiny fraction of the opioids prescribed by doctors in Oklahoma, according to the Yahoo News report.
They also said Johnson & Johnson had been heavily regulated by the US Drug Enforcement Agency, and the US Food and Drug Administration, and there was a need for drugs to address chronic pain.
The flood of opioid cases against drug manufacturers has been compared to litigation against the tobacco industry, which led to a $246 billion settlement in 1998.
Across the country opioids were involved in almost 400,000 overdose deaths from 1999 to 2017, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
