A federal judge has ordered three of the biggest pharmacy chains in the US to pay $650.5 million to two Ohio counties for their role in the opioid crisis.
A federal court determined in November that Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS, and Walmart contributed to the overproduction of addictive opioid tablets. The two Ohio counties successfully won the lawsuit against the pharmacy companies, arguing that the distribution scheme seriously harmed local communities.
Outside of Cleveland, in the counties of Lake and Trumbull, the money will be utilized to fight the opioid crisis. Attorneys for the counties estimated that each county had suffered harm worth $1 billion. Trumbull County will receive $444 million over 15 years, compared to Lake County’s $306 million. The firms were required to pay approximately $87 million over the first two years, according to US District Judge Dan Polster.
Over the past 20 years, opiate-based medications like fentanyl and OxyContin have caused addiction in millions of US citizens. Painkiller overdoses were blamed for about 500,000 fatalities between 1999 and 2019.
Ohio’s opioid crisis has swamped the courts
The judge, Polster slammed the US pharmacy companies by saying that they “squandered the opportunity to present a meaningful plan to abate the nuisance.”
Mark Lanier, an attorney for the counties, told the jury that Cleveland, Ohio’s opioid crisis has swamped courts, social service organizations, and law enforcement, ruining families and resulting in the birth of babies to addicted moms.
Their attorneys claim that the massive amounts of drugs that flooded their neighborhoods as a result of the failure to verify the validity of prescriptions led to a public nuisance.
According to reports, Trumbull County received more than 80 million prescription opioids between 2012 and 2016, or 400 tablets for every citizen. Over the same time period, 61 million pills were consumed in Lake County.
According to a US district judge’s decision, Trumbull County would receive $344 million over 15 years, while Lake County will receive $306 million.
The companies are planning an appeal against the judgment
Lake County Commissioner John Hamercheck said that the ruling “marks the start of a new day in our fight to end the opioid crisis.” However, the companies are now planning to appeal against the ruled judgment.
Walmart said that the county’s lawyers “sued Walmart in search of deep pockets, and this judgment follows a trial that was engineered to favor the plaintiff’s attorney and was riddled with remarkable legal and factual mistakes. We will appeal.”
The lawyers for the large pharmacy chains have always claimed that they had procedures in place to stop the flow of medications if their pharmacists became suspicious. They would also alert the authorities to any suspect doctor orders. They added that the doctors, not their pharmacies, were in charge of regulating the number of tablets prescribed for valid medical purposes