A lawyer representing several counties in California announced on Monday at the beginning of a legal trial that four drug companies contributed to the spread of the opioid epidemic in the United States by misleadingly marketing their drugs and downplaying the risks of addiction. These counties are accusing Johnson & Johnson, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Endo International, and Allergan’s division of creating a drug crisis that has resulted in approximately 500,000 overdose deaths from opioids over two decades, according to Reuters.
The counties of Santa Clara, Los Angeles, Orange, and the city of Oakland are demanding that the drug companies pay more than $50 billion to mitigate the public harm they have caused, along with imposing penalties if found guilty.
Fidelma Fitzpatrick, the plaintiffs' attorney, told the Orange County Superior Court judge that the case relates to the "devastating legacy" left by the companies' promotion of opioid analgesics for chronic pain, which resulted in a "mountain" of addictive pills flooding the state and the country. She added, "The evidence will show that each of these companies knew what was going to happen: that their opioids would cause an overwhelming burden of addiction, overdoses, and the deaths that California and its people have experienced."
Defense attorneys responded that the drugs from these companies were only a small part of the opioid market, that doctors had been warned about their risks, and that it could not be proven that they were responsible for the health crisis. Teva's attorney, Kully James, stated, "You won’t hear from a single doctor that they were misled."
There are over 3,300 similar lawsuits across the country regarding the opioid crisis. Only one lawsuit has gone to court in an opioid-related case, in which the state of Oklahoma won a judgment of $465 million against Johnson & Johnson in 2019, which is currently under appeal.
