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Tag: opioid settlements

  • What To Expect After The Johnson & Johnson Verdict 

    What To Expect After The Johnson & Johnson Verdict 

    The Oklahoma ruling has changed expectations for how other opioid trials will be resolved. 

    When an Oklahoma judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million for its role in contributing to the state’s opioid epidemic, he made history by holding an opioid-related company accountable for damages in court for the first time. 

    With thousands of similar cases pending across the country—including 1,600 consolidated lawsuits slated to go before a federal judge in Ohio this October—the Oklahoma ruling has changed expectations for how other opioid trials will be resolved. 

    “It’s the first time that any of these claims have been trial tested,” Joe Khan, an attorney representing municipalities from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Mississippi in opioid-related cases, told TIME. 

    The Aftermath

    Khan said that following the verdict in Oklahoma, more drug manufacturers and distributors may be apt to settle their cases. In the Oklahoma case, Purdue Pharma settled for $270 million, while Johnson & Johnson chose to proceed to trial. All other defendants in the case made smaller settlements. The fact that Johnson & Johnson had to pay so much more than Purdue could prompt other companies to err on the side of caution. 

    This “sends a very strong signal to defendants [that] rolling the dice (and going to trial) was not the winning strategy,” said Khan. 

    Professor emeritus of law at George Washington University, Peter Meyers, said that the Oklahoma case was a “game-changer” that strengthens the cases for other municipalities. Even if the judgment were overturned on appeal, that would not happen before the federal cases begin in October, so the impact of the Oklahoma case will be large, he said. 

    He compared the current litigation to lawsuits from the 1990s against Big Tobacco. Ultimately, all 50 states reached a massive settlement, that saw the top five tobacco companies paying $9 billion a year in perpetuity. 

    Meyers said, “The world changed when all states began bringing cases on behalf of their constituents.”

    Still, following the ruling, Johnson & Johnson’s stock price rose, indicating that the company’s investors were relieved by the result. The state was asking for billions in damages. 

    Analyst Joshua Jennings told The New York Times, “As silly as it sounds, a $600 million decision was, relative to expectations, a positive outcome. It was less onerous than many had expected.” 

    Setting a Precedent

    In addition, other legal precedents could compete with the Oklahoma ruling. The Oklahoma case was based on public nuisance laws: the state essentially argued that drug manufacturers and distributors had created a nuisance with their aggressive and misleading sales tactics.

    Although that line of reasoning worked in this case, University of Georgia law professor Elizabeth Burch pointed out that similar cases have failed against gun manufacturers, which could indicate trouble for future opioid lawsuits. 

    She said, “You can draw an analogy there, mainly because once you sell a gun, it is no longer in the control of the gun manufacturers.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Johnson & Johnson Ordered To Pay $572 Million For Role In Oklahoma Opioid Crisis

    Johnson & Johnson Ordered To Pay $572 Million For Role In Oklahoma Opioid Crisis

    According to the ruling, the pharmaceutical company “engaged in false and misleading marketing of both their drugs and opioids generally.”

    In a decision that may have far-reaching implications for pharmaceutical companies across the United States, an Oklahoma judge has ruled that Johnson & Johnson must pay more than $572 million for its alleged role in helping create the state’s opioid crisis. Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman wrote in his ruling that the company and its pharmaceutical subsidiary, Janssen, “engaged in false and misleading marketing of both their drugs and opioids generally,” which he deemed a “public nuisance.”

    Johnson & Johnson denied the allegation and plan to appeal Balkman’s verdict, which observers on both sides of the argument have been closely monitoring to determine its impact on a federal trial involving nearly 2,000 cases against opioid manufacturers slated for the fall of 2019.

    Deceptive Marketing Practices

    As both NBC News and CNN noted, final filings submitted earlier this month and statements in court by Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and other attorneys for the state argued that Johnson & Johnson had aggressively pursued medical professionals to prescribe opioid medication while minimizing the potential risk of addiction and/or overdose death through deceptive marketing practices.

    Testimony from some of the relatives and friends of the more than 6,000 Oklahomans who died from opioid overdoses underscored Hunter’s assessment that the company had ignored scientific research in pursuit of a “magic pill” that would produce major profits.

    The result, as Hunter said, was the “worst man-made public nuisance this state and our county has ever seen: the opioid crisis.”

    Attorneys for Johnson & Johnson argued that the state failed to prove any elements of its case, from Janssen’s specific role in contributing to the opioid crisis to the impact of their marketing promotions. They added that the public nuisance accusation was nothing more than “potshots taken from promotional statements” and a misinterpretation of a law initially employed in property cases.

    But Judge Balkman sided with the state, noting that the allegedly misleading marketing was “more than enough to serve as the act or omission necessary to establish the first element of Oklahoma’s public nuisance law.”

    Major Public Health Crisis

    The state initially asked for an abatement plan of approximately $17 billion, which would be applied to addiction treatment and prevention programs over a period of 30 years. The plan, calculated by Christopher Ruhm, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia, included the costs of addiction treatment, physician education plans, care for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, prescription tracking programs, grief support and more over the next three decades.

    “It is a lot of money. It’s also a major public health crisis,” Ruhm said.

    Balkman’s verdict called for an abatement program of $572,102,028 – about one year’s worth of payments under the state’s proposals. In his ruling, he wrote that “The state did not present sufficient evidence of the amount of time and costs necessary, beyond year one, to abate the opioid crisis.”

    Johnson & Johnson Plan to Appeal

    Johnson & Johnson’s executive vice president and general counsel, Michael Ullmann, said in a statement that his company was innocent of any wrongdoing and planned to appeal.

    He also wrote “The unprecedented award for the State’s ‘abatement plan’ has sweeping ramifications for many industries and bears no relation to the Company’s medicines or conduct.”

    But as CNN noted, the case could also have considerable impact on the numerous lawsuits filed against drugmakers by states, cities and communities across the country. Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said in early August that attorneys have been “watching and learning from the case Oklahoma has assembled, while defendants have been watching for vulnerabilities.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Two Drugmakers Settle Ahead Of Federal Cases

    Two Drugmakers Settle Ahead Of Federal Cases

    Endo and Allergan will still face ongoing litigation with dozens of other municipalities.

    Two drug makers have settled with two Ohio counties ahead of an upcoming federal opioid trial in Cleveland.

    Endo International and Allergan will pay a combined $15 million in damages to Cuyahoga and Summit counties in Ohio. Both companies avoided admitting any wrongdoing. 

    The settlement comes ahead of a landmark trial slated to start Oct. 21—which will hear arguments by local governments, Native American tribes and more from around the country alleging that the drug companies fueled the opioid crisis.

    Right now, other major drug manufacturers and distributors including Purdue Pharma, Teva, Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen will still proceed to trial in the fall, according to STAT News. 

    Although Endo settled, the company faces ongoing litigation with other municipalities, including more than 2,300 cases filed by counties and cities. 

    The Deal

    Endo’s deal with the Ohio counties indicates that the company could settle its suits globally for about $1.8 billion, according to FiercePharma. That’s lower than the $4 billion in settlements that was initially predicted for the company. One analyst said that the lower-than-expected settlement amount indicates that drug manufacturers may be “out of the woods.”

    After the settlement was announced, Endo and other pharmaceutical stocks were trading higher, indicating that investors were pleased with the settlement amount. Although Allergan did not comment on the settlement, Matthew Maletta, Endo’s executive vice president and chief legal officer said that the agreement was a “favorable outcome.”

    One analyst, John Leppard, said that the settlement amount from Endo was likely calculated based on what the company thought it would cost to go to trial. 

    The agreement “appears designed only to spare Endo the expense of the bellwether trial, rather than satisfying their overall potential costs in a comprehensive resolution of government-related opioid claims with the approximately 2,000 cities and counties party to the multi-district litigation,” he wrote. “The cash portion of this settlement appears intended to reflect Endo’s estimated costs of having to participate in the bellwether trial itself, rather than their overall liability or culpability.”

    In addition to the $10 million cash settlement, Endo agreed to provide the counties with up to $1 million of the drugs Vasostrict and Adrenalin free of charge. Vasostrict is a hormone used to treat diabetes, blood pressure and other conditions. Adrenalin is used in EpiPens. 

    The settlement could be an indication of the amounts that other pharmaceutical companies may settle for ahead of thousands of other upcoming lawsuits. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • States Fight For Control Over Opioid Master Settlement

    States Fight For Control Over Opioid Master Settlement

    A coalition of 39 state attorneys general signed a letter stating that the negotiations should be left up to the states, not local governments.

    With billions in payouts at stake, a national settlement between companies that manufacture and distribute opioid medication and municipalities across the United States that have sued for the companies’ alleged role in fueling the opioid crisis is being negotiated—but not without a fair share of hurdles to overcome.

    On Tuesday (Aug. 6), Judge Dan Polster, the federal judge overseeing the lawsuits, expressed his support for an “ambitious” proposal to reach a resolution at a hearing in Cleveland. 

    Inside The Proposal

    The proposal, suggested by the plaintiffs’ lawyers, would allow “all 34,000 towns, cities and counties… to vote on settlement offers,” the New York Times reported. Whatever they vote on—if the offer is approved—will be the final outcome. After that, plaintiffs “will be bound by the outcome and can bring no further suits.”

    The proposal would stop additional lawsuits and give each voting community a portion of the damages.

    However, as the Times reported, state attorneys general have criticized the plan, arguing that the lawsuits filed by towns, cities and counties undermine the states’ efforts to reach a settlement with the drug companies. By contrast, the municipalities have hired private lawyers to handle the lawsuits.

    A coalition of 39 state attorneys general signed a letter stating that the negotiations should be left up to the states, not local governments—i.e. it should be resolved “from the top down, not bottom up.”

    “In my view, it’s the plaintiffs’ lawyers using local governments to hijack the sovereignty of the states and create ‘city states.’ But this is not the United City-States of America,” said Dave Yost, Ohio’s attorney general.

    Local Municipalities Push Back

    There’s a reason for the local municipalities’ decision to pursue a settlement on their own, the Times explained. With the 1998 Master Tobacco Settlement reached by cigarette manufacturers and 46 states, a bulk of the $250 billion payout went to discretionary state spending rather than efforts to fix the damage inflicted by tobacco products like prevention and treatment programs.

    “Still bitter about those outcomes, communities whose coffers had been depleted by the opioid crisis decided to sign with private lawyers, circumventing the states,” the Times reported.

    In a recent op-ed, Mark A. Gottlieb, executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law, emphasized the importance of securing a portion of the settlement that will go to future safeguards against similar public health crises. 

    “We must ensure that we do not squander the opportunity to address the opioid crisis through a coordinated public health approach in the next settlement,” he wrote.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Will Nearly 2,000 Pending Opioid Lawsuits End In A Master Settlement?

    Will Nearly 2,000 Pending Opioid Lawsuits End In A Master Settlement?

    Attorneys are attempting to put together a settlement that would make a “meaningful impact on the deeply tragic opioid crisis.”

    There are now nearly 2,000 opioid lawsuits pending in federal court. States, counties and cities across the U.S. are seeking to hold drug companies like Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson and McKesson accountable for fueling the national opioid epidemic.

    The companies are accused of aggressive and improper marketing of opioid drugs like OxyContin and downplaying the risks of developing a drug use disorder.

    With so many lawsuits seeking money damages for the devastating impact that opioid abuse has inflicted on American communities, the question of how they will be dealt with remains.

    The Master Plan

    In June, a group of attorneys representing 1,200 counties, cities and towns proposed a plan to reach a settlement with two-dozen drugmakers and distributors. One of the attorneys, Joe Rice, was the architect of the 1998 Master Settlement between 46 states and major U.S. cigarette manufacturers, WBUR reported. “Tens of billions of dollars would be needed to make a significant—a real significant impact on this epidemic,” said Rice.

    The plan is “ambitious and creative but fundamentally flawed,” according to attorney Mark A. Gottlieb, executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law. Gottlieb, wary of its potential impact, emphasized the importance of making a strong statement with the massive settlement that would provide closure for both parties. Ideally it would be a symbolic end to the opioid crisis.

    “While any new ‘master settlement’ must primarily compensate the plaintiffs for their losses, a settlement that simply moves money around, as the tobacco settlement did, has no chance at having a meaningful impact on the deeply tragic opioid crisis,” wrote Gottlieb in his commentary.

    Safeguarding The Future

    Gottlieb proposed securing a portion of the settlement that will go to future safeguards against similar crises. He suggests an independent foundation to serve as a watchdog over the pain management and addiction treatment industries, to provide opioid prescribing education, to fund treatment and prevention programs, to fund addiction-related medications such as naloxone and buprenorphine, and to advise policymakers on relevant legislation.

    “We must ensure that we do not squander the opportunity to address the opioid crisis through a coordinated public health approach in the next settlement,” Gottlieb wrote.

    View the original article at thefix.com