A judge in Oklahoma yesterday said that Johnson & Johnson had intentionally played down the risks and oversold the benefits of opioids, and ordered it to pay the state $572 million.
Floodgates
It believed the judgment will open the floodgates to at least 2,000 more lawsuits.
Oklahoma attorney general Mike Hunter said that at least 6,000 state residents have died from opioid overdoses since 2000, and that thousands more suffered from addiction.
The amount was short of the $17 billion judgment that Oklahoma had sought to pay for addiction treatment, drug courts and ancillary services it says it needs to undo the damage caused by mass addiction.
Pending lawsuits
There are more than 2,000 opioid lawsuits pending around the United States, all pursuing a similar legal strategy.
Judge Thad Balkman found that Johnson & Johnson had breached the state’s “public nuisance” law.
He also said it had promoted “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing campaigns” that had “caused exponentially increasing rates of addiction, overdose deaths” and babies born exposed to opioids.
Oklahoma’s public nuisance statute is broad, and the state argued that Johnson & Johnson had interfered with public health.
Johnson & Johnson’s lawyers contended that the state was contorting public nuisance law to the point of being unrecognizable.
The firm’s lawyer said it had strong grounds for appeal and would pursue them vigorously.
The judge said that the figure awards would pay for a year’s worth of services needed to combat the epidemic in Oklahoma.
General counsel and executive vice president of Johnson & Johnson Michael Ullmann said “We recognize the opioid crisis is a tremendously complex public health issue,” he said, “and we have deep sympathy for everyone affected.”
In a three-year period between 2015 and 2018, it’s believed some 18 million opioid prescriptions were written in a state with a population of 3.9 million.