Washington
(AFP) - US drugmaker Johnson & Johnson faces a potential record $17 billion
damages payout Monday when an Oklahoma judge rules whether its aggressive
promotion of opioid painkillers was responsible for the state's addiction
epidemic.
The first
pharmaceutical company to go to trial over the US opioid addiction crisis,
which fueled over 70,000 drug overdose deaths in 2017 alone, J&J was
accused by the state of "a cynical, deceitful multimillion-dollar
brainwashing campaign" to sell opioids as a "magic drug."
Oklahoma
aims to recover the costs of caring for a generation of addicts, families and
communities affected by the crisis.
J&J is
the first drugmaker to go to trial and the case is seen as a bellwether for
thousands of possible criminal and damages suits over the seeming uncontrolled
distribution of highly addictive painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocodone,
and J&J's Nucynta and Duragesic, between 2000 and 2015.
Two other
major drugmakers accused in the same suit, Purdue Pharma of the United States
and Israel's Teva, settled with Oklahoma before the case went to trial.
Purdue,
which produced the widely abused opioid Oxycontin, agreed to pay the state $270
million in March and Teva negotiated an $85 million settlement.
The state
is relying on its "public nuisance" law to pursue J&J, a statute
usually used for prosecuting people and companies that damage the interest or
safety of the general public.
According
to the state of Oklahoma, around 6,000 people there have died from opioid
overdoses since 2000.
The state
has asked the court to award it more than $17 billion in damages from J&J
to be paid out over 30 years to address the epidemic and the fallout from it.
J&J
argued that the law is being inappropriately applied and that its products,
made by its pharmaceutical division Janssen, had a very small role in the
addiction epidemic in Oklahoma and nationally.
The
Oklahoma suit is "an unprecedented expansion of public nuisance liability
against a single manufacturer whose specialized production made of a tiny
fraction" of all opioid medications prescribed in Oklahoma, the company
said in a statement to the court last month.
The
Oklahoma judge's decision Monday afternoon could be an important precursor for
a case to go to trial in Ohio later this year, in which nearly 2,000 lawsuits
by cities, counties and other entities against companies involved in opioid
production and distribution have been rolled together.
Dozens of
local and state governments across the country have exacted settlements with
opioid manufacturers and distributors to address their local problems.
In 2007,
Purdue pleaded guilty and was fined $600 million in Virginia over criminal
charges that they misled the health industry and the public about the highly
addictive properties of Oxycontin.
#BREAKING Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $572 million in opioids trial pic.twitter.com/6lfRXEljdg— AFP news agency (@AFP) 26 augustus 2019
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