Jury Finds Pharmacy Chains Contributed To Ohio’s Opioid Crisis

A federal jury in Ohio found Tuesday that pharmacy giants Walgreens, CVS and Walmart contributed to the state’s opioid crisis, a ruling that could serve as a guideline for thousands of similar cases pending coast to coast. The decision is the first judgment by a jury holding a pharmacist responsible for his role in the devastating epidemic of opioid overdoses that has plagued the United States for decades.

In the lawsuit, Northeast Ohio’s Lake and Trumbell counties alleged that drugstores ruthlessly distributed more than 100 million opioid pain pills in the counties, causing addiction, death and strain on public services. Between 2012 and 2016, more than 80 million prescription pain relievers were sold in Trumbull County alone, or about 400 tablets for each resident. About 61 million opioid pain relievers were dispensed in Lake County during the same period.

“For decades, pharmacy chains have watched the pills pouring out their doors wreak havoc and failed to take legal action,” said a committee of attorneys who represent local governments in federal opioid lawsuits. in a statement. “Instead, these companies responded by opening more locations, flooding communities with pills, and facilitating the flow of opioids into an illegal secondary market.”

Counties say pharmacies are a public nuisance

Plaintiffs ‘attorneys argued that the pharmacies’ actions were a public nuisance, costing approximately $ 1 billion each to the counties. Mark Lanier, an attorney representing the counties, said the pharmacies are not hiring or training enough staff and implementing systems to prevent suspicious orders from being carried out.

“The law requires pharmacies to be conscientious about their medication,” Lanier said. “This case should be a wake-up call that failure will not be accepted.”

“The jury has rung a bell that can be heard in all pharmacies in America,” he added.

The lawsuit originally named pharmacy retailers Rite-Aid and Giant Eagle as plaintiffs in the case. Rite-Aid reached an agreement in August and agreed to pay Trumbull County $ 1.5 million in damages, while a settlement amount with Lake County was not released. Giant Eagle agreed to a settlement late last month, although the terms of that agreement were not disclosed.

The case, which was decided after a six-week trial by a twelve-person jury, was dismissed in one of around 3,000 state opioid lawsuits under the supervision of US District Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland. Adam Zimmerman, who teaches mass procedural law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the ruling could induce other drug dealers to resolve their pending cases.

“It’s the first opioid trial against these big names,” Zimmerman told the New York Times. “They were the least willing group of defendants to come to an agreement, so this verdict is at least a small sign for them that these jury cases are not necessarily going well.”

Pharmacy chains will appeal against the judgment

All three retailers have announced that they will appeal the jury’s verdict. Walmart said in a statement that plaintiffs’ attorneys sued plaintiffs “in search of deep pockets while ignoring the real causes of the opioid crisis – as doctors suspect in ways the law never intended, and many federal and state authorities.” State health officials say it affects the doctor-patient relationship.

Describing the case as an unsustainable attempt to “resolve the opioid crisis with an unprecedented expansion of the Public Harassment Act,” Walgreens spokesperson Fraser Engerman added that the company “never manufactured or marketed opioids, nor did we ever sell them to the ‘pill factories.” ‘and the internet distributed pharmacies that fueled this crisis. “

“As the plaintiffs’ experts themselves testified, many factors contributed to the problem of opioid abuse, and solving this problem requires the involvement of all stakeholders in our health care system and all members of our community,” CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis said in a statement after the Judgment was announced.

The pharmacies are not alone with their criticism of the judgment. Dr. Ryan Marino, assistant professor in the emergency medicine and psychiatry departments at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, says that focusing on blame on the drug industry, prescribing doctors, and pharmacies ignores the role of bad policies on opioid -Effect has played crisis.

“If retail pharmacies are held accountable, I urge that we also hold policymakers accountable for driving people to predictable death and failing to take action to prevent drug abuse or addiction by not having basic things like housing Provide access to security, “education, employment and income that are known to prevent addiction in the first place,” Marino wrote in an email to the High Times. “The same old approaches haven’t helped this problem and only seem to make it worse.”

Some drug manufacturers and distributors, including Johnson & Johnson, have also chosen to settle lawsuits against them for their alleged contributions to the opioid crisis that killed more than 500,000 Americans in the past twenty years. Kevin Roy, chief public policy officer at Shatterproof addiction solutions advocacy group, said Tuesday’s ruling could prompt other pharmacies to consider an agreement.

“It’s a signal that the public, at least in selected locations, feels that there has been exposure and needs to be addressed,” said Roy.

However, Roy noted that the judgments of the various courts hearing opioid cases were inconsistent in their judgments and that the details of public harassment laws vary from state to state. Earlier this month, a California judge ruled in favor of drug manufacturers in a case filed by the city of Oakland and three counties. And in Oklahoma, on November 9, the state Supreme Court overturned a 2019 ruling of $ 465 million against Johnson & Johnson.

“There have been a lot of different decisions recently that should give us cause to be careful about what this really means, by and large,” said Roy.

How much Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart Trumbull and Lake Counties will have to pay remains to be seen. The judge is expected to decide in the spring on the compensation to be paid in the case.