A federal judge in Cleveland has ordered CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart to pay damages to two Ohio counties for their distribution of opioids, a week after a judge in San Francisco determined Walgreens CAN be held liable for the city’s issue.
Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Dan Polster awarded $650 million in damages for the big pharmacy chains’ distribution of opioids in their respective localities.
In his order, Judge Polster stated that the funds will be utilized to combat the opioid epidemic in Lake and Trumbull counties outside of Cleveland. Attorneys for the counties estimate the overall cost of the damages at $3,3 billion.
The judge reprimanded the three firms, stating that they “squandered the opportunity to provide a viable strategy to abate the nuisance” after determining what the counties were owed in the spring.
Lake County will get $306 million over the next fifteen years. Trumbull County will earn $344 million throughout the same time frame. Polster ordered the corporations to pay about $87 million immediately to cover the first two years of payments, although it was unclear whether they were required to pay this amount throughout their appeals.
The three corporations criticized the decision. Walmart and Walgreens asserted that the case involved legal inaccuracies, while CVS stated that it disagreed with the verdict.
The trial was part of a larger constellation of over 3,000 federal opioid lawsuits Polster consolidated. Others are progressing in state court.
The award of damages is the result of a federal judge’s ruling last week that Walgreens can be held liable for contributing to San Francisco’s opioid crisis by over-dispensing highly addictive medications without sufficient control for years.
In a statement, Lake County Commissioner John Hamercheck said, “Today signals the beginning of a new day in our struggle to stop the opioid crisis.”
After a six-week trial, a jury ruled in favor of the counties in November. The judge was then tasked with determining how much each county should receive. In May, he heard testimony to decide damages. The counties persuaded the jury that pharmacies played a disproportionate role in causing a public nuisance by dispensing pain medicine.
It was the first time pharmacy firms successfully defended themselves in court during a drug crisis that has killed 500,000 Americans since 1999.
The decision about damages was made on the same day that attorneys general from many states said they had reached an agreement with the manufacturer of opioids Endo International to pay up to $450 million over 10 years. The settlements resolve claims that the corporation engaged in fraudulent marketing of opioids by “minimizing the risk of addiction and exaggerating the benefits.”
Attorneys for the pharmacy companies maintained they had mechanisms in place to limit the flow of medicines when pharmacists voiced concerns and would report dubious prescriptions to authorities. They further stated that doctors, not pharmacies, controlled the number of medications prescribed for valid medical purposes.
Walmart released a statement on Wednesday stating that the counties’sued Walmart in quest of deep wallets, and this verdict follows a trial designed to favor the plaintiffs’ attorneys and filled with stunning legal and factual errors.
Fraser Engerman, a representative for Walgreens, stated, “The facts and the law did not support the jury’s verdict last autumn, and they do not support the court’s conclusion today.”
He stated that the court ‘made serious legal errors in allowing the matter to advance to a jury based on a flawed legal premise that is inconsistent with Ohio law, and then compounded those errors in its finding regarding damages.’
Michael DeAngelis, a spokesperson for CVS, stated that the business strongly disagreed with the court’s ruling on damages and the underlying verdict.
Walmart is headquartered in Arkansas, Walgreens in Illinois, and CVS in Rhode Island.
Prior to trial, Rite Aid and Giant Eagle settled claims with the counties. Their payment amounts have not been made public.
During the trial, Mark Lanier, an attorney for the counties, stated that the pharmacies were attempting to shift blame away from themselves.
Lanier told the jury that the opioid epidemic has overloaded courts, social-service organizations, and law enforcement in Ohio’s blue-collar region east of Cleveland, leaving behind distraught families and kids born to addicted mothers.
Between 2012 and 2016, about 80 million prescription opioids were dispensed in Trumbull County alone, or 400 for each citizen. During that time, around 61 million pills were distributed in Lake County.
At the outset of the trial, Walgreens’ attorney Kaspar Stoffelmayr stated that prescriptions for painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone increased after medical associations acknowledged that patients have the right to be treated for pain.
‘Pharmaceutical corporations duped doctors into prescribing much too many drugs,’ he explained.
According to the counties, pharmacists should be the last line of protection against drugs falling into the wrong hands.
Kevin Roy, the chief public policy officer at Shatterproof, an organization that advocates for solutions to addiction, stated in November that the verdict could lead pharmacies to follow the path of major distribution companies and certain drugmakers that have reached billion-dollar settlements in nationwide opioid cases. No pharmacy has secured a nationwide settlement as of yet.
The agreement with Endo, a company located in Ireland, stipulates that the $450 million will be split among the participating states and towns. It also requires Endo to make available for public review materials linked to opioids and to pay $2.75 million to archive these documents.
The agreement prohibits Endo from ever again marketing opioids. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday.
The corporation, whose U.S. headquarters are located in Malvern, Pennsylvania, did not reply to phone and email requests for comment on the agreement on Wednesday.
Endo manufactures both generic and brand-name opioids, including Percocet and Endocet. In 2017, the manufacturer withdrew the opioid Opana ER from the market.
Endo, according to the attorneys general, “falsely marketed the benefits” of Opana ER’s “so-called abuse-deterrent formulation.” Attorneys general asserted that the drug’s formulation did not dissuade its misuse and led to lethal outbreaks of hepatitis and HIV as a result of people injecting it. A federal judge determined last week that Walgreens can be held accountable for contributing to San Francisco’s opioid crisis by selling excessive amounts of highly addictive medications without sufficient control for years.
In 2018, the city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against Walgreens and other medication producers and distributors in response to the city’s escalating opioid epidemic.
In the filing, City Attorney David Chiu stated that by flooding the city with uncontrolled prescription opioids, the pharmaceutical corporation produced a “public nuisance.”
The court found Walgreens guilty, but did not rule on monetary damages, which will be assessed at a subsequent hearing.
Chiu stated that the pharmacy chain “continuously violated” the federal Controlled Substances Act by neglecting to track opioid prescriptions, so prohibiting pharmacists from screening prescriptions.
From 2006 through 2020, Walgreens pharmacies in San Francisco delivered hundreds of thousands of red flag opioid prescriptions without doing enough due diligence, according to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer.
‘Tens of thousands of these prescriptions were penned by physicians with questionable prescribing histories. Walgreens did not give its pharmacists with appropriate time, personnel, or resources to undertake due diligence on these prescriptions, according to the evidence.
A spokesperson for Walgreens stated that the company is “disappointed with the outcome” and that yesterday’s ruling was “not supported by the facts and the law.”
Last year, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a state of emergency, stating that something must be done about the city’s large population of drug sellers and public drug users.
Between 2015 and 2020, the city attorney’s office reports an almost 500% increase in opioid-related overdose deaths in San Francisco.
According to the city’s health department, 712 individuals died from drug overdoses in 2020, compared to 257 who died from COVID-19.
A large proportion of San Francisco’s estimated 7,800 homeless individuals battle with persistent addiction or severe mental illness.
In May, Walgreens and the state of Florida struck a $683 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging that the firm inappropriately dispensed millions of opioids that contributed to the opioid crisis.
In its arrangement with Florida, Walgreens did not admit wrongdoing and will make payments to the state over 18 years.
In addition to Alabama, Michigan, and New Mexico, the corporation faces litigation in additional states.
According to the National Institutes of Health, overdose symptoms include unresponsiveness, erratic breathing, gray, blue, or pale skin color, and extremely small pupils. According to the NIH, the best and most effective strategies to reverse an overdose are to call 911 immediately, administer Naloxone, perform CPR, deliver Naloxone again, and remain calm and reassuring.