Preview Newsletter

Opioid Litigation Daily Media Report - 12/5/17

Montana OAG Suit

Montana sues OxyContin maker Purdue over opioid epidemic
Dec 4, 2017 | Reuters
By Nate Raymond

Montana has sued OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP, withdrawing from a multistate investigation by attorneys general into opioid manufacturers’ marketing practices and joining a growing list of states that have broken off to pursue individual lawsuits.
Montana Is Latest State to Sue Purdue Pharma Over Opioid Crisis
Dec 4, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Sara Randazzo

Montana has become the latest state to sue Purdue Pharma LP for its alleged role in the opioid crisis, as the pharmaceutical company presses for joint talks with states to resolve widespread accusations that its aggressive marketing contributed to addiction rates.
Montana files lawsuit against OxyContin manufacturer
Dec 4, 2017 | Associated Press
By Amy Beth Hanson

The state of Montana filed a consumer protection lawsuit against the manufacturer of OxyContin, alleging it engaged in deceptive marketing practices by misrepresenting the risk of addiction to the opioid pain medication — costing the state millions of dollars in prescription, prevention, medical and social costs.
Montana AG Hits Purdue With Opioid Suit
Dec 5, 2017 | Law360
By Emily Field

Montana’s attorney general on Monday announced that the state is suing Purdue Pharma over its allegedly deceptive marketing of opioids, including OxyContin, saying more than 700 people in the state have died of opioid overdoses in the last 17 years.
Attorney General Tim Fox is taking his fight against opioid epidemic to the courtroom.
Dec 4, 2017 | Fox Montana (MT)
By Bliss Zechman

The state filed a lawsuit late last week against the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma for its unethical marketing and distribution practices of its drug oxycotin.
Montana Joins Suit Against Drug Company For Aiding Opioid Abuse
Dec 5, 2017 | Montana Public Radio (MT)
By Corin Cates-Carney

Montana is suing the pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma. Attorney General Tim Fox held a press conference today to announce a consumer protection lawsuit against the Connecticut-based company.
Montana sues maker of OxyContin
Dec 4, 2017 | Independent Record
By Holly K. Michaels

The state of Montana is suing Purdue Pharma, the makers of the opioid drug OxyContin, saying the company has lied to conceal the danger of the drug and created thousands of addicts.

Oneida County, NY

County picks legal team for opioid suit
Dec 4, 2017 | Rome Sentinel (NY)
By Dan Guzewich

Add Oneida County to the list of surrounding counties signing up for legal representation in the growing national movement to sue over the opioid overdose epidemic.
PICENTE ANNOUNCES POTENTIAL OPIOID LITIGATION
Dec 4, 2017 | WIBX (NY)
By Staff

Oneida County has hired three local law firms to explore potential litigation in recovering the expenses incurred fighting the opioid epidemic.
Potential litigation against drug companies explored
Dec 4, 2017 | Utica Observer Patch (NY)
By Samantha Madison

Oneida County has hired three law firms to investigate whether it would be beneficial to pursue litigation against pharmaceutical companies and other parties in order to recover expenses incurred fighting the opioid epidemic.
ONEIDA COUNTY EXPLORING LEGAL ACTION REGARDING OPIOID EPIDEMIC COSTS
Dec 4, 2017 | WKTV (NY)
By Staff

Oneida County is exploring possible legal options regarding the expenses incurred fighting the opioid epidemic locally, Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente announced today.
Oneida County Could Sue Opiod Pharmaceuticals
Dec 5, 2017 | CNY Homepages (NY)
By Jamie DeLine

This afternoon, Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente announced that three local law firms will be working together to potentially sue opioid manufacturing pharmaceutical companies.
Oneida County eyes legal action regarding opioid crisis costs
Dec 4, 2017 | CNY Central.com
By Luke Parsnow

Oneida County has hired counsel to explore potential litigation in recovering expenses used in combating the opioid epidemic, County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. announced Monday.

Palm Beach County

Palm Beach County may fight opioid epidemic with a lawsuit
Dec 5, 2017 | WPBF (FL)
By Staff

Palm Beach County commissioners are expected to vote Tuesday afternoon on whether or not to move forward with a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies over the opioid crisis.
If Palm Beach County sues big Pharma, 14 law firms interested
Dec 4, 2017 | Palm Beach Post
By Wayne Washington

Fourteen law firms — including seven based in Florida — have expressed an interest in representing Palm Beach County if it decides to file suit against opioid manufacturers, distributors or pharmacies, according to a report prepared by the county attorney’s office.
PB County considers suit against opioid makers
Dec 5, 2017 | WFLX (FL)
By Staff

Opioid addiction has destroyed lives, killed thousands of Americans and brought pain and suffering to many people and their loved ones.

Other Litigation Coverage

Genesee County commissioners suing drug companies for proliferation of opioids
Dec 5, 2017 | ABC 12 (MI)
By Staff

The Genesee County Board of Commissioners voted to hire legal counsel on Monday that will represent the county in upcoming lawsuits against drug manufacturers.
Genesee County files lawsuit against opioid companies
Dec 4, 2017 | WNEM (MI)
By Scott Wolchek

The battle to fight the opioid epidemic is ongoing.
Hospitals Sue 12 Pharmaceutical Companies Over Opioids
Dec 4, 2017 | WRKG (AL)
By Bill Riales

Twelve pharmaceutical companies are facing a lawsuit charging they deceptively marked and sold opioids to hospitals. Mobile-based Infirmary Health is one of the hospitals that brought the suit in U.S. District Court in Mississippi. The lawsuit was filed late last week by Lexington, Mississippi attorney Don Barrett. Barrett was also involved in litigation against tobacco companies in the 1990’s that won billions in damages for the state.
Corralling the Pills: Rural East Texas Counties Take on Big Pharma Over the Opioid Crisis
Dec 5, 2017 | Dallas Observer (TX)
By Christian McPhate

Travis Strickland has been fighting the war on drugs for more than a decade. He's a sergeant in the Lufkin Police Department's special services division, which includes the street crime and narcotics units. The job used to involve taking apart methamphetamine labs that sprouted like prickly pears around rural Texas. Then Mexican drug cartels took over the meth trade and the labs moved south.
Clark County, Reno prepare to move forward with opioid lawsuits, despite warnings from AG
Dec 5, 2017 | The Nevada Independent (NV)
By Riley Snyder

At least two Nevada localities are preparing to move forward with lawsuits against major opioid manufacturers and distributors, despite continued opposition by Attorney General Adam Laxalt.
Jacksonville plans to sue opiod manufacturers
Dec 4, 2017 | JDNews.com (NC)
By Kelsey Stiglitz

The city of Jacksonville will swear-in for four council members and present its plan for a civil suit against wholesale opioid drug manufacturers during the city council meeting this week.
More counties pursue, consider suing amid opioid crisis
Dec 5, 2017 | Associated Press
By Staff

A North Carolina county is suing drug manufacturers and distributors it says caused the local opioid crisis, while another county may pursue legal action, as well.
Jacksonville City Council postpones vote on opioid litigation
Dec 4, 2017 | The Anniston Star (AL)
By Patrick McCreless

City leaders Monday postponed joining a cross-jurisdictional lawsuit against some nationwide drug distributors to learn more about the litigation and its possible effects.
Brunswick may seek legal action for opioid crisis
Dec 4, 2017 | Star News Online (NC)
By Mackenzie Holland

Brunswick County Commissioners have declared the opioid crisis a public nuisance and may seek legal action against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
Brown County committees recommend joining opioid lawsuit
Dec 5, 2017 | Fox 11(WI)
By Ben Krumholz

Brown is close to becoming the latest Wisconsin county to join a lawsuit targeting drug makers.
Nashville plots possible lawsuit against opioid makers
Dec 4, 2017 | WKRN (TN)
By Nick Caloway

The Metro Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday night to authorize Mayor Megan Barry to file suit against makers of prescription opioids.
County’s opioid lawsuit filed Monday
Dec 4, 2017 | The Morehead News (KY)
By Brad Stacy

Rowan County Fiscal Court has officially filed a lawsuit against major opioid distributors accusing them of the wrongful distribution of prescription opioids.
County Hires Law Firm to Sue Those Responsible for Drug Epidemic
Dec 4, 2017 | Cape May County Herald (NJ)
By Al Campbell

In the current drug (opioid) war, it seems that freeholders have taken heart from a quotation by Sir Winston Churchill, and fight back.

Commentary and FYIs

Opioid lawsuit: Vegas lawyer says Reno should use competitive process to choose attorney
Dec 4, 2017 | Reno Gazette Journal (NV)
By Anjeanette Damon

The Las Vegas lawyer who first pitched the city of Reno on suing opioid manufacturers says the Reno City Council should use a competitive process to select a lawyer rather than just hand him the contract at Wednesday's meeting.
It Doesn't Take a Genius to Solve the Opioid Crisis (EDITORIAL)
Dec 5, 2017 | Vice News
By Maia Szalavitz

It's become an almost daily routine: Some panel, discussion, summit, commission, hearing, project, or report claims to have the answer to America’s historically deadly opioid crisis. The latest pathetic “solution," of course, is the (weirdly disputed) emergence of longtime Republican pollster, Donald Trump "alternative facts" adviser, and noted public health expert Kellyanne Conway as some kind of alleged "opioid czar." I say alleged because even though Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested last week that she had the gig, the White House later said she was merely continuing existing work on the issue.

Broadcast Media Coverage

WNEM-TV5 News at 9:00am
Dec 5, 2017 | WNEM (CBS)
By Flint, MI

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244058?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
WPBF 25 News at 9:00am
Dec 5, 2017 | WPBF (ABC)
By West Palm Beach, FL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244413?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Good Day Wisconsin
Dec 5, 2017 | WLUK (Fox)
By Green Bay, WI

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244415?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Montana Today
Dec 5, 2017 | KTVM (NBC)
By Bozeman, MT

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244438?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Good Morning Nashville on News 2
Dec 5, 2017 | WKRN (ABC)
By Nashville, TN

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244515?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Good Day Wisconsin
Dec 5, 2017 | WLUK (Fox)
By Green Bay, WI

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244568?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49

Montana OAG Suit

Montana sues OxyContin maker Purdue over opioid epidemic

Dec 4, 2017 | Reuters

By Nate Raymond

Montana has sued OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP, withdrawing from a multistate investigation by attorneys general into opioid manufacturers’ marketing practices and joining a growing list of states that have broken off to pursue individual lawsuits.
Montana Attorney General Tim Fox announced a lawsuit on Monday accusing Purdue of misrepresenting the likelihood that long-term use of painkiller would lead to addiction and of falsely claiming it was safe for treating chronic pain.
“Pharmaceutical companies that knowingly and deceptively harm consumers must be held accountable,” Fox said in a statement.
Purdue in a statement denied the allegations. It has argued its medications are U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved for long-term use and carry warning labels about their addiction risks.
“We are deeply troubled by the opioid crisis and we are dedicated to being part of the solution,” Purdue said.
Opioids were involved in over 33,000 deaths in 2015, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. President Donald Trump in October declared the problem a national public health emergency.
State attorneys general have been conducting a multistate investigation into whether companies that manufacture and distribute prescription opioids engaged in unlawful practices.
Increasingly, some attorneys general have withdrawn from the probe to pursue lawsuits against drugmakers including Purdue, claiming they engaged in deceptive marketing that underplayed opioids’ risks.
Purdue faces lawsuits by at least 11 states besides Montana. It also faces lawsuits by cities and counties nationally and a federal probe by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut.
Plaintiffs lawyers involved in the cases have compared them to the litigation by states against the tobacco industry that led to 1998’s $246 billion settlement.
Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue and three executives pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal charges related to the misbranding of OxyContin and agreed to pay a total of $634.5 million to resolve a U.S. Justice Department probe.
That year, Purdue also reached a $19.5 million settlement with 26 states and the District of Columbia. It agreed in 2015 to pay $24 million to resolve a lawsuit by Kentucky.
The current multistate probe was announced publicly after Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine withdrew from it and in May sued Purdue, Endo International Plc, Johnson & Johnson, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Allergan Plc.
Purdue in a letter last week urged DeWine to avoid litigation by rejoining the multistate probe, where officials have said they are exploring if early settlement opportunities exist.

Return to headline | Return to top
Montana Is Latest State to Sue Purdue Pharma Over Opioid Crisis

Dec 4, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal

By Sara Randazzo

Montana has become the latest state to sue Purdue Pharma LP for its alleged role in the opioid crisis, as the pharmaceutical company presses for joint talks with states to resolve widespread accusations that its aggressive marketing contributed to addiction rates.
“The epidemic began not with an outbreak, but with a business plan,” Montana Attorney General Timothy Fox said in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Lewis and Clark County state court. The suit claims Purdue violated state laws on consumer protection and unfair trade practices by misrepresenting the likelihood that long-term use of its opioids, including its signature drug OxyContin, would lead to addiction.
More than 700 people have died of opioid overdoses in Montana since 2000, according to the lawsuit, which also claims that prescription drug abuse there is 15 times more deadly than methamphetamines, heroin and cocaine combined.
Stamford, Conn.-based Purdue denied the allegations Monday and said it is committed to helping find a solution for the opioid crisis.
The company said late last week it is working on an “expedited basis” with more than 30 state attorneys general as part of a bipartisan probe into the opioid crisis. That disclosure came in a letter to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who sued Purdue in May for false marketing, kicking off widespread litigation by government agencies.
Drug manufacturers and distributors face more than 150 lawsuits by states, counties, cities and other entities attempting to recoup costs from treating opioid addiction.
Dozens of states have joined forces to jointly request information from drugmakers and manufacturers as part of a widespread investigation into opioid addiction. Individual states, meanwhile, have broken away from the multistate effort to sue on their own.
The pharmaceutical industry has pushed back on attempts by the municipalities and states to vilify it for its role in the crisis. Endo International PLC, in its own letter to Ohio’s attorney general, said the state’s “assertion that the pharmaceutical industry ’caused this epidemic’ is—at best—a stunning oversimplification.”
Purdue encouraged Ohio to rejoin the multistate coalition and said it welcomed the chance to speak with the attorney general in that forum. Mr. DeWine has said he left the multistate effort and sued on his own because Ohio faces an urgent crisis and he couldn’t wait for the wider investigation to unfold.
“It is uncontroversial that the multistate process is the best and fastest way for states to get resources to address this crisis,” Purdue said in its letter. “Litigation takes years, and the costs for both sides are significant.”
Montana joins more than a dozen other states that have individually sued drug manufacturers and distributors, including New Hampshire, New Jersey, South Carolina, Missouri, New Mexico and Kentucky.
Montana hired law firm Motley Rice, which is working with several other states and local governments, and local firm Rossbach Law to help advise it on the case. The suit seeks reimbursement for money the state spent on opioid treatments and addiction treatment through state Medicaid and other health plans.
Private law firms, working on contingency-fee arrangements, are advising many of the government entities that have sued.

Separately, a panel of federal judges is weighing whether to consolidate the growing number of opioid-related cases filed in federal courts. At a hearing last week, the judges grappled with the best way to combine lawsuits filed against different players in the supply chain by a range of plaintiffs and questioned whether the governmental entities have met the legal threshold needed to sue.

Return to headline | Return to top
Montana files lawsuit against OxyContin manufacturer

Dec 4, 2017 | Associated Press

By Amy Beth Hanson

The state of Montana filed a consumer protection lawsuit against the manufacturer of OxyContin, alleging it engaged in deceptive marketing practices by misrepresenting the risk of addiction to the opioid pain medication — costing the state millions of dollars in prescription, prevention, medical and social costs.
Attorney General Tim Fox said Monday he is seeking a court order to stop the deceptive practices by Purdue Pharma and demanding damages for costs incurred by the state in paying for opioids for first-line treatment of chronic pain and for dealing with the adverse effects of opioid use, including social services, medical and law enforcement costs.
The complaint, filed on Nov. 30, also seeks punitive damages and civil penalties.
"As our investigation revealed and our complaint alleges, for years, Purdue knew the damage caused by OxyContin, and rather than scale back or eliminate distribution of the drug, it ramped-up deceptive marketing tactics to present the drug as 'safe,'" Fox said. "Purdue manipulates doctors, lies to consumers, and its actions contributed to thousands of deaths across the country."
Montana has seen more than 700 opioid-related deaths since 2000, the complaint said.
Purdue spokesman Robert Josephson said the company is "deeply troubled by the opioid crisis and we are dedicated to being part of the solution."
He said Purdue is working to balance patient access to approved medications while trying to solve the public health challenge.
"We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense," Josephson said.
Purdue has had a similar response to the increasing number of lawsuits filed by states and other government entities against the pharmaceutical company.
Montana's complaint says opioids were widely recognized as highly addictive and only suitable for short-term use for severe pain or when a patient was dying.
In 2007, Purdue settled with the federal government and several states, including Montana, acknowledging it lied to doctors about the OxyContin's potential for abuse.
However, the complaint says, Purdue continued to deceptively market the pain medication through promotional sales visits, various payments to physicians and through patient advocacy groups.
Purdue also has advocated an unsubstantiated concept of "pseudo-addiction" that suggested a patient seeking more medication was not addicted, but their pain was being under-treated, and doctors should prescribe a higher dose of opioids, the complaint alleges.

Return to headline | Return to top
Montana AG Hits Purdue With Opioid Suit

Dec 5, 2017 | Law360

By Emily Field

Montana’s attorney general on Monday announced that the state is suing Purdue Pharma over its allegedly deceptive marketing of opioids, including OxyContin, saying more than 700 people in the state have died of opioid overdoses in the last 17 years.
State Attorney General Timothy Fox unveiled the suit, filed on Nov. 30 in Montana state court, at a news conference in Helena, saying the prescription drug addiction is deadlier than meth, heroin and cocaine combined. Like similar complaints that have come out of the opioid epidemic, the state’s suit claims that Purdue’s alleged misrepresentations about the risks and benefits of opioids fed into the crisis.

“Our investigation has determined, and the state’s complaint alleges, that since the late 1990s Purdue has engaged in deceptive marketing practices designed to manipulate physicians to ensure that their patients are prescribed OxyContin without making those physicians or patients aware of the dangers of addiction,” Fox said.

Before Purdue launched its marketing campaign, doctors wrote few opioid prescriptions, saving their use for chronic pain, post-surgical pain and end-of-life care, as they feared they were too addictive for long-term use and too dangerous for relatively minor conditions, the state said in the suit.

Purdue’s campaign involved respected doctors and “seemingly neutral” patient advocacy groups and professional associations, and claimed that opioids could be used by patients with chronic pain without a material risk of addiction, Montana’s suit said.

“Other deceptive messages spread by Purdue included the concocted concept of 'pseudoaddiction,' which a Purdue key opinion leader invented to make doctors wrongly believe that patients who exhibit addictive behaviors are instead exhibiting signs of undertreated pains and should be treated with more opioids — the medical equivalent of fighting fire with gasoline,” the suit said.

The state’s suit features quotes from Montanans about the toll of opioid addiction on their loved ones, including one from the son of Gail Robin Sharp, who was crowned the first-ever Ms. Blackfeet in 1979.

“I had to take her off life support because she was never going to come back,” said her son Willie Ramirez. “I mean, to me, if a doctor gives it to you, you know, it should be okay, right?”

The suit also claims that Purdue told prescribers that OxyContin works for 12 hours, despite knowing it did not for many patients. This required frequent increases in dosage, upping the likelihood of addiction, the suit said.

Montana’s suit alleges violations of the state’s unfair trade practices and consumer protection law, as well as its false claims law.

A Purdue spokesman told Law360 that it vigorously denies the allegations in Montana’s suit and has been working to address the opioid crisis.

“Although our products account for approximately two percent of the total opioid prescriptions, as a company, we’ve distributed the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, developed three of the first four FDA-approved opioid medications with abuse-deterrent properties and partner with law enforcement to ensure access to naloxone,” the spokesman said.

The state of Montana is represented by state Attorney General Timothy Fox, state solicitor general Dale Schowengerdt, assistant state attorney general Matthew Cochenour, Mark Matiolli, Kelley Hubbard and Chuck Munson of the state attorney general’s Office of Consumer Protection, William Rossback of Rossbach Law PC and Linda Singer, Jeffrey Nelson and David Benner of Motley Rice LLC.

Counsel information for Purdue was not immediately available on Monday.

The case is the State of Montana v. Purdue Pharma LP, case number ADU-2017-949 in the Montana First Judicial Circuit, Lewis and Clark County.

Return to headline | Return to top
Attorney General Tim Fox is taking his fight against opioid epidemic to the courtroom.

Dec 4, 2017 | Fox Montana (MT)

By Bliss Zechman

The state filed a lawsuit late last week against the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma for its unethical marketing and distribution practices of its drug oxycotin.
The lawsuit seeks to hold the company accountable for multiple deceptive practices. Notably saying they misrepresented the addictive likelihoods for long-term users and failed to disclose the harmful side effects of oxycotin.
"The executives at Purdue new exactly what they were doing. Such contrived deception is unconscionable and should not go without consequences," said Fox.
Drug overdose deaths are on the rise throughout the country according to the Center for Disease Control.
Attorney Generals across the U.S. have addressed the issue. It is the third leading cause of injury related death in Montana according to the CDC and the Montana.gov website.

Return to headline | Return to top
Montana Joins Suit Against Drug Company For Aiding Opioid Abuse

Dec 5, 2017 | Montana Public Radio (MT)

By Corin Cates-Carney

Montana is suing the pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma. Attorney General Tim Fox held a press conference today to announce a consumer protection lawsuit against the Connecticut-based company.
Fox says Montana is joining over a dozen other states in alleging Purdue Pharma holds some of the blame for the rise in abuse of opioid drugs across the nation. Drugs like Perdue’s painkiller Oxycontin.
“This company has gone to great lengths to conceal the dangers of their product," Fox said, "while misleading and exploiting physicians in a way that creates thousands of addicts dependent on their drug. And it’s time put an end to this abuse.”
Fox says 90 percent or more of all opioid based medication prescribed in the state comes from Purdue.

The lawsuit was filed November 30 in Montana District Court.
Fox says the state is seeking significant damages and a settlement. "that prohibits this kind of behavior in the future and also give us meaningful measures and to hold these companies accountable in the future so that they don’t engage in these deceptive and harmful practices in the future.”
Montana joined more than 40 states back in September to demand information and documents from a handful of opioid manufactures in an investigation into the companies’ marketing and distribution practices.
According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, this week Gallatin County Commissioners are considering filing a suit against several drug companies for their marketing strategies in selling opioid based medication.

Return to headline | Return to top
Montana sues maker of OxyContin

Dec 4, 2017 | Independent Record

By Holly K. Michaels

The state of Montana is suing Purdue Pharma, the makers of the opioid drug OxyContin, saying the company has lied to conceal the danger of the drug and created thousands of addicts.
Attorney General Tim Fox announced the lawsuit Monday.
“One drug and one company stands above the rest as the most significant purveyor of addictive and all-too-often deadly opioid-based prescription drugs,” Fox said. “The state’s complaint alleges that this company has gone to great lengths to conceal the dangers of their product while misleading and exploiting physicians in a way that creates thousands of addicts dependent on their drug.”
Since 2000, more than 700 Montanans have died from opioid overdoses, and between 2011-2013 more than 7,000 went to the emergency room because of a prescription drug overdose.
The lawsuit is filed on behalf of all counties in the state. Several Montana counties have recently planned to sue opioid manufactures, and this lawsuit is separate from those actions.
In September the state of Washington announced it was suing Purdue, while the city of Seattle filed its own lawsuit against Purdue and other companies.
In 2007 Purdue admitted to federal charges of mis-branding OxyContin and paid a $634.5 million fine after an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. It also paid a $19.5 million settlement to 26 states and the District of Columbia.
The Associated Press reported Monday that Robert Josephson, a Purdue spokesman, said the company denied the allegations in the lawsuit and is working to be part of the solution to the opioid crisis.
The complaint alleges Purdue misrepresented the likelihood that long-term use of OxyContin would lead to addiction and that the company claimed the drug would improve overall health and did not disclose the long-term side effects of opioid use.
The lawsuit also says Purdue falsely claimed long-term opioid use is safe and effective for pain treatment, told doctors that OxyContin works for 12 hours when it knew it did not for many patients, claimed a new generation of opioid deterred abuse and were safer when the company knew that was not true and falsely claimed opioids are safer than alternative, non-narcotic treatment.
Purdue also has advocated an unsubstantiated concept of "pseudo-addiction" that suggested a patient seeking more medication was not addicted, but their pain was being under-treated, and doctors should prescribe a higher dose of opioids, the complaint alleges.
The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief to stop what it calls deceptive marketing practices by Purdue and damages for the public health epidemic it says the company has created, as well as for what the state has paid for opioid treatment through the Montana Medicaid program and the Montana Healthcare plan, as well other costs of addressing opioid addiction in the state, along with maximum civil penalties. It also asks that Purdue turn over all profits from selling the drug.

Return to headline | Return to top

Oneida County, NY

County picks legal team for opioid suit

Dec 4, 2017 | Rome Sentinel (NY)

By Dan Guzewich

Add Oneida County to the list of surrounding counties signing up for legal representation in the growing national movement to sue over the opioid overdose epidemic.
Oneida County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. was scheduled to announce Monday afternoon that the county is enlisting the services of the Cherundolo Law Firm, Brindisi, Murad, Brindisi & Pearlman, and Robert F. Julian in regard to potential litigation targeting companies and others in the prescription painkiller supply chain.
If filed, the objective would be to recover some of the money spent by the county’s criminal justice and social services departments for everything from the addicts and suppliers who are arrested or hospitalized to those who die.
Herkimer County is represented by the same team as Oneida County. Madison County went with the Manhattan-based law firm of Napoli and Shkolnik.
Oneida County Attorney Peter M. Rayhill sent out a request for proposals to law firms prior to the selection of the Cherundolo, Brindisi and Julian offices. Julian is a former state Supreme Court justice and was an
Oneida County legislator for many years. State Assemblyman Anthony J. Brindisi, D-119, Utica, is “of counsel” to the Brindisi law firm.
Lawsuits alleging negligence and aggressive sales tactics are popping up around the country. Drug makers face accusations that the core of the opioid crisis has their fingerprints on it. They encouraged greater and longer use of their painkillers, critics have contended.
Drug makers have plenty of arguments with which to mount a defense, experts say. They can point to steps they have taken over the last decade to cut down on the potential for misuse. They can pin the blame on a full lineup of other parties that also played a role in the opioid crisis, from doctors to drug distributors to patients themselves.
More than 52,000 Americans died in 2015 from drug overdoses, most of them involving prescription opioids or related illicit drugs such as fentanyl and heroin, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. President Donald Trump has declared the epidemic a national public health emergency.
The litigation being brought by cities, counties and states is being likened to what happened with the tobacco industry. In 1998, cigarette companies made a $248 billion civil settlement with states to snuff out public health-related suits. Oneida County used $39.6 million of its share to pay down debt and $11 million to fund capital projects, according to County Comptroller Joseph J. Timpano.

Return to headline | Return to top
PICENTE ANNOUNCES POTENTIAL OPIOID LITIGATION

Dec 4, 2017 | WIBX (NY)

By Staff

Oneida County has hired three local law firms to explore potential litigation in recovering the expenses incurred fighting the opioid epidemic.
County Executive Anthony Picente says the county has hired the Cherundolo Law Firm, Brindisi, Murad, Brindisi and Pearlman and Robert Julian to determine if pursuing litigation against pharmaceutical companies would be beneficial.
"The opioid crisis has hit Oneida County extremely hard,” Picente said. “We have spent millions of dollars to combat the problem through law enforcement, treatment and prevention, and if those efforts have been unfairly impacted by the improper practices of pharmaceutical companies and others, we owe it to the tax payers to leave no stone unturned in recovering any unjustified costs.”
Julian says any lawsuit would based on fraud by the pharmaceutical firms -- that the companies touted a product for long term use that was really only for short term use, causing people to become addicted.
Picente says several downstate counties are also exploring similar litigation.

Return to headline | Return to top
Potential litigation against drug companies explored

Dec 4, 2017 | Utica Observer Patch (NY)

By Samantha Madison

Oneida County has hired three law firms to investigate whether it would be beneficial to pursue litigation against pharmaceutical companies and other parties in order to recover expenses incurred fighting the opioid epidemic.
“I think we owe it to the people of this county,” said Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente Jr. “I think we’d be remiss and lax in our duties if we did not look into every aspect of this epidemic. I think this is a big one. When you look at the history of the prescription side of opiates, what should have been prescribed short term was prescribed long term as a result of how they have pushed forward and I think that’s significant. ... This is where we start hitting this crisis from all aspects.”
The firms — Cherundolo Law Firm; Brindisi, Murad, Brindisi & Pearlman; and Robert F. Julian — already have started compiling data on the epidemic and are working with County Attorney Peter Rayhill and other officials within the county to see if there is a fraud case against those companies.
Attorney John Cherundolo said the most important part people need to remember is that Big Pharma lied to doctors, encouraging them to prescribe medications for much longer than they should have.
“In the beginning, Big Pharma lied,” he said. “They particularly went on a course of marketing to entice doctors to use these medications when they were geared for short-term use and they made them promises that they were non-addictive and safe to use for long-term use. But 80 percent of people who end up going to heroin come from prescription medications. It’s a long-term thing that never stops.”
Oneida County isn’t the first to look at taking action against pharmaceutical companies. The Village of Herkimer in November hired the same three law firms to look into the suing opioid manufacturers and distributors across the country.
In late 2016, Suffolk County took steps to file a lawsuit against those companies that market opioid painkillers.
In May, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a lawsuit against five pharmaceutical companies — Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Unit, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Allergan and Endo International.
In September, a group of 41 attorneys general banded together to probe the role drug makers might have played in the epidemic.
Picente said he tasked the County Attorney’s Office with looking into the matter more than a year ago, and after a diligent assessment and a request for proposal from outside counsel was completed, the county decided last month to move forward with pursuing its legal options.
Louis Brindisi, another of the attorneys the county has hired, said the legal action is reminiscent of the action that was taken against tobacco companies in the 1990s.
While potential litigation would not directly help residents, it would help the county recoup some of the money it has spent on coping with the opioid epidemic.
“This is following in the same footsteps as the tobacco litigation,” he said. “Different states will get involved and municipalities and counties will be getting involved, but instead of going after Big Tobacco, we’re going after Big Pharma.”
Colleen Carey, assistant professor of public policy at Cornell University, said while the litigation being brought against the pharmaceutical companies is reminiscent of the cases brought against tobacco companies, it’s also similar to those against gun manufacturers.
The ones against the gun manufacturers haven’t gone anywhere, she said, but the tobacco case brought forth a lot of changes, so this could go either way.
“I think a couple of things that make this case less likely to succeed than the smoking case is these were drugs that were approved by the FDA and were being prescribed by licensed physicians in accordance with existing laws at the time,” Carey said. “You might think that Purdue (Pharmaceuticals) should bear some of the responsibilities because they did have internal data that I think should have, and almost certainly did, raise some eyebrows at the time about the amount of prescriptions being written by single physicians, for the amount of prescriptions going to certain geographic areas; that’s information that Purdue had readily available and didn’t necessarily do anything with.”

Return to headline | Return to top
ONEIDA COUNTY EXPLORING LEGAL ACTION REGARDING OPIOID EPIDEMIC COSTS

Dec 4, 2017 | WKTV (NY)

By Staff

Oneida County is exploring possible legal options regarding the expenses incurred fighting the opioid epidemic locally, Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente announced today.
Picente says the county has hired the Cherundolo Law Firm; Brindisi, Murad, Brindisi & Perlman; and attorney Robert F. Julian to investigate Oneida County’s legal options, and to determine whether or not pursuing litigation against pharmaceutical companies and other parties would be beneficial.
“The opioid crisis has hit Oneida County extremely hard,” Picente said in a news release. “We have spent millions of dollars to combat the problem through law enforcement, treatment and prevention, and if those efforts have been unfairly impacted by the improper practices of pharmaceutical companies and others, we owe it to the tax payers to leave no stone unturned in recovering any unjustified costs.”
More than a year ago Picente had the county attorney’s office look into the matter, he said, which led to the county deciding last month that they should move forward pursuing legal options.
Picente says that according to the Onondaga County Medical Examiner’s Office, out of the 166 drug- and toxin-related deaths in Oneida County between 2013 and 2016, 56 were heroin-related, 26 were fentanyl-related, 24 were both heroin- and fentanyl-related, and 30 of them were related to other opioids.
Robert F. Julian says the argument against the drug companies is multifaceted but summed it up as follows, "The feeling is that they committed fraud, that essentially they toted a product for long-term use that was really only indicated for short-term use and it addicted people and caused people in many instances to pass away or become dysfunctional."
Louis T. Brindisi summed up the potential action against the drug manufacturers as follows, "The actions against the pharmaceutical companies and against the distributors are based upon the fact that they misled lead doctors through their key opinion leaders saying that these opioids we're not addictive, and they are addictive."
The attornies say they will begin immediately looking into whether it will be beneficial for the county to file lawsuits against the drug manufacturers, but right now they have no timeframe as to how long that decision will take, but they say they may have a better idea of how long in about a month.

Return to headline | Return to top
Oneida County Could Sue Opiod Pharmaceuticals

Dec 5, 2017 | CNY Homepages (NY)

By Jamie DeLine

This afternoon, Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente announced that three local law firms will be working together to potentially sue opioid manufacturing pharmaceutical companies.
"The opioid crisis and the amount of deaths and addictions to it have cost the county millions of dollars in terms of law enforcement, in terms of incarceration, in terms of prevention treatment," said Oneida County Executive, Anthony Picente.
Lawyers Brindisi, Murad,Brindisi, and Pearlman, Robert F. Julian, and the Cherundolo Law Firm, are working together to determine whether or not a lawsuit against large pharmaceutical companies, could provide enough funds to reimburse the county for it's opioid related expenses. The attorneys have been working on this issue for months. They already know which companies they will be targeting.
"Perdue, the manufacturer of OxyCotin, you've got Endo with Percocet, you've got Televiv, there is a whole string of pharmaceutical manufacturers. We are going against the distributors because it was their duty to make sure that they did not flood the market with these opioids, and that is what's happening," explained attorney, Louis Brindisi.
Brindisi said the pharmaceutical companies knowingly used false advertising to promote their products as non-addictive.
Picente said taxpayers will not have to pay for the lawsuit fees unless a settlement is reached.
"Obliviously we will look at the costs," said Picente. "But I think, when you look at the millions being spent on this problem with what we can potentially recover, it will more than accommodate that."

Return to headline | Return to top
Oneida County eyes legal action regarding opioid crisis costs

Dec 4, 2017 | CNY Central.com

By Luke Parsnow

Oneida County has hired counsel to explore potential litigation in recovering expenses used in combating the opioid epidemic, County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. announced Monday.
Picente said the county has enlisted the Cherundolo Law Firm, PLLC; Brindisi, Murad, Brindisi & Pearlman, LLP and Robert F. Julian, PC to investigate legal options and determine if pursuing litigation against pharmaceutical companies and other parties would be possible and beneficial.
“The opioid crisis has hit Oneida County extremely hard,” Picente said. “We have spent millions of dollars to combat the problem through law enforcement, treatment and prevention, and if those efforts have been unfairly impacted by the improper practices of pharmaceutical companies and others, we owe it to the tax payers to leave no stone unturned in recovering any unjustified costs.”
Picente added that he has tasked the Oneida County Attorney's Office with looking into the matter over a year ago, and after a diligent assessment and a request for proposal from outside counsel was completed, the county decided last month to move forward in pursuing legal options.
It's the latest move from an upstate New York county to consider taking on the pharmaceutical companies for their role in the opioid crisis prevalent in upstate New York over the last few years. In July, the Onondaga County Legislature announced its plan to sue companies that manufacture and distribute opioid drugs, arguing that those companies should reimburse any costs to the county that are connected to the opioid epidemic impacting the region, including costs from the county to emergency medical services.
Of the 166 drug/toxin-related deaths in Oneida County between 2013 and 2016, 56 were heroin-related, 26 were fentanyl-related, 24 were heroin and fentanyl-related and 30 were attributed to other opioids, according to the Onondaga County Medical Examiner’s Office.
In Onondaga County, there were 142 opioid-related deaths last year.

Return to headline | Return to top

Palm Beach County

Palm Beach County may fight opioid epidemic with a lawsuit

Dec 5, 2017 | WPBF (FL)

By Staff

Palm Beach County commissioners are expected to vote Tuesday afternoon on whether or not to move forward with a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies over the opioid crisis.
Commissioners had asked the county attorney to look into litigation and the selection process for retaining outside counsel to represent the county. According to the agenda, 14 firms have expressed interest in representing the county.
In July, Delray Beach was the first city in Florida to file a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical companies accusing them of misleading customers.
Commissioners will vote on the issue during the 3 p.m. meeting.

Return to headline | Return to top
If Palm Beach County sues big Pharma, 14 law firms interested

Dec 4, 2017 | Palm Beach Post

By Wayne Washington

Fourteen law firms — including seven based in Florida — have expressed an interest in representing Palm Beach County if it decides to file suit against opioid manufacturers, distributors or pharmacies, according to a report prepared by the county attorney’s office.
At the suggestion of County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay, whose former aide lost a daughter to the opioid epidemic, commissioners directed County Attorney Denise Nieman to explore the possibility of the county filing suit against opioid manufacturers or distributors.
Nieman’s report, which will be presented to commissioners when they meet on Tuesday, found a complicated legal landscape with lots of activity as governments try to recover some of the money they have spent combating an opioid crisis they contend has been made worse by various aspects of the drug manufacturing, prescribing and distribution process.
“I’m ready to move forward with the lawsuit,” McKinslay said Monday evening. She said she wants Nieman to narrow the list of law firms so the commission can make a final choice.
The Palm Beach Post has reported in depth on how the opioid crisis has devastated families and burdened government budgets.
While the opioid crisis has been particularly pernicious in Florida in general and in Palm Beach County in particular, much of the action regarding lawsuits has taken place beyond the Sunshine State.
“To date, over eighty governmental entities nationwide have filed suit against opioid manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies, and/or doctors in both state and federal courts,” Nieman’s report states. “Currently, no Florida government entities have filed suit and, to the best of our knowledge, the City of Delray is the only public entity in Florida that has retained a firm.”
Delray Beach has hired Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, a national firm with an office in Boca Raton, to represent it in a lawsuit against at least eight pharmaceutical makers and distributors, including Purdue Pharma and McKesson Corp.
Geller Rudman & Dowd is among the 14 firms that have told Nieman’s office they are interested in representing Palm Beach County should it decide to sue.
A handful of states — Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio — have sued drug companies, arguing that they are at least in part to blame for the spiraling opioid epidemic. A report from the National Association of Counties also notes that counties in West Virginia, New York and Illinois have filed suit.
The suits are reminiscent of the legal attacks states mounted in the 1990s against tobacco companies, who were knocked for their advertising practices and for increasing health care costs.
After years of litigation, the largest four tobacco companies in the U.S. reached a master settlement in 1998, agreeing to pay a combined $5 trillion over 25 years.
Nieman has stressed that her office would not be handling any suit against Big Pharma if one is filed.
“Should the (Board of County Commissioners) decide to commence litigation, it would be necessary to retain outside counsel, as the nature of this type of litigation goes well beyond what the (county attorney’s office) can handle,” the report states.
Nieman said she would recommend a competitive bidding process with her office selecting a firm or whittling the bidding firms down to three, with commissioners making the selection from among those finalists.
Nieman’s report did note some big dollar settlements in suits brought by governments against pharmaceutical firms, including:A 2007 suit against Purdue Pharma, which was settled for $75 million. The U.S. Department of Justice used some of the information from that case to get a criminal penalty of $692 million. More than two dozen states got a settlement of $19 million.Drug distributor McKesson paid $13.25 million to U.S. attorneys’ offices in Florida, Maryland, Colorado, Texas, Utah and California in 2008 to settle civil penalties that three McKesson facilities failed to report suspicious orders of hydrocodone and alprazolam.Cardinal Health in 2008 paid $34 million to U.S. attorneys’ offices in Florida and six other states for failing to report suspicious orders of hydrocodone and for violations of the Controlled Substances Act.A CVS in Sanford settled a case in 2015 brought by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and U.S. attorneys offices after the pharmacy was accused of “filling painkiller prescriptions far in excess of the average pharmacy in violation of the Controlled Substances Act.”McKesson settled with the Justice Department for $150 million “because they did not warn the DEA about the large # of suspicious orders; this settlement included suspension of sales of controlled substances from distribution centers in Colorado, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.”
There have been other settlements across the country, but Nieman’s report warns that getting a settlement is not guaranteed in a climate where many lawsuits have recently been initiated.
“Most of the lawsuits are in the early pleading stage,” the report states. “Therefore, it is not possible to predict a possible outcome at this time.”
Commissioner Hal Valeche said he would like the county to consider ways it can recoup costs expended combating the opioid crisis. But he said the buck might not only stop with drug companies. Over-prescribing doctors, distribution centers and other elements of the industry should be considered, too, he said.
“Singling out one particular segment in this whole problem doesn’t strike me as fair,” he said.
Valeche said he is concerned about the financial risks of pursuing legal action.
“If you lose, the court can assign you costs,” he said, describing a scenario in which the county could be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and other costs if a judge determines the county knew or should have known its case had no legal merit.
Valeche said he would want the county to hire a firm that agreed to cover those costs.
Nieman’s report indicated the county would not be interested in using taxpayer money on a case it loses.
“Based on firms’ informal representations, litigation would be pursued without county funding,” the report states. “Attorney’s fees would be paid on a contingency bases, with costs fronted by the firm, only to be reimbursed by the county if there is an acceptable recovery. Firms have not been able to give us a reliable estimate of what those costs could be.”
Interested law firms
1. Weiss, Handler and Cornwell (Boca Raton)
2. Motley Rice (multiple locations)
3. Simmons, Hanly, Conroy (multiple locations)
4. Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Rafferty and Proctor (Pensacola)
5. Robbins, Geller, Rudman and Dowd (Boca Raton)
6. Napoli Shkolnik (multiple locations)
7. Gordon and Doner (Palm Beach Gardens)
8. Critton, Luttier and Coleman (West Palm Beach)
9. Mike Moore Law Firm (Flowood, Miss.)
10. Gilbert (Washington, D.C.)
11. Labaton Sucharow (New York)
12. Searcy, Denny, Scarola, Barnhart and Shipley (West Palm Beach)
13. Podhurst Orseck (Miami)
14. Michael Bern and Partners (New York)

Return to headline | Return to top
PB County considers suit against opioid makers

Dec 5, 2017 | WFLX (FL)

By Staff

Opioid addiction has destroyed lives, killed thousands of Americans and brought pain and suffering to many people and their loved ones.
Now, there's a movement to go after the people some say are responsible for the epidemic.
Staff for Palm Beach County report more than 80 government entities have filed suit against manufacturers, distributors, doctors and pharmacies involved. In some cases it has led to big financial gains with settlements as high as $150 million.
Staff says the county can certainly benefit from a hefty reward but warn a settlement is not promised.
So far 14 law firms have expressed an interest in representing the county. Delray Beach is the only city in Florida to hire a firm -- none have actually filed suit yet.
In their analysis, staff pointed out that firms are not interested in filing a class action lawsuit, yet alone joining other counties as plaintiffs.
Based on presentations by the firms, county funds would not be necessary.
Attorneys' fees would be paid on a contingency basis with costs fronted by the firm, only to be reimbursed by the county if there is an acceptable recovery.

Return to headline | Return to top

Other Litigation Coverage

Genesee County commissioners suing drug companies for proliferation of opioids

Dec 5, 2017 | ABC 12 (MI)

By Staff

The Genesee County Board of Commissioners voted to hire legal counsel on Monday that will represent the county in upcoming lawsuits against drug manufacturers.
A statement from the Board of Commissioners says drug companies are responsible for a proliferation of opioid drugs in Genesee County, which is increasing the death rate and the number of addictions.
The county intends to file legal action against drug wholesalers and distributors the Board of Commissioners says have violated state and federal laws. The county is seeking reimbursement for costs it has incurred from the over-prescription of opioid drugs.
"There is no excuse for these companies to be dumping large amounts of opioids into our communities," said Commissioner Brenda Clack, who is chairwoman of the Human Services Committee. "They need to be held accountable for the costs that we have incurred and the damage they have created."
According to the Board of Commissioners:
-- There are 1.5 opioid prescriptions on average for every person in Genesee County.
-- 194 pills per person are imported into Genesee County, which is nearly two and a half times the national average of 82.
-- Genesee County has the 18th highest death rate of Michigan's 87 counties.
-- Deaths attributed to opioid drug use, both legal and illegal, have increased steadily since 2013.
-- Opioid addictions have been proven to lead into heroin addictions.
Weitz & Luxenberg PC, the Sam Bernstein Law Firm PLLC and Behm & Behm Law Firm will represent the county in the upcoming legal action. No specific drug companies or wholesalers were named as possible defendants.

Each of the law firms will help the county investigate which state and federal laws have been broken, then represent the county in any upcoming lawsuits filed against drug companies.

Return to headline | Return to top
Genesee County files lawsuit against opioid companies

Dec 4, 2017 | WNEM (MI)

By Scott Wolchek

The battle to fight the opioid epidemic is ongoing.
People in Genesee County are taking their mission straight to one of the biggest suppliers.
A new lawsuit looks to hold pharmaceutical companies responsible for the damage caused by the addictive drugs.
There are one and a half times more prescriptions for opioids in Genesee County than there are people.
"There literally is nobody who has not been touched by this opioid epidemic," said Mark Young, chairman for the Genesee County Board of Commissioners.
The county commissioners voted unanimously to hire a law firm to take legal action against the companies who make opioids.
"There's some comparisons you can do if you look at lawsuits on state levels against the tobacco industry," Young said.
The complaint is not written yet, so the exact nature of the lawsuit is not decided.
Young said he wants answers and transparency.
"Was this attempted to be advertised or marketed inappropriately? If it was, let's make sure that those problems don't happen again," Young said.
Wayne and Oakland County recently filed similar lawsuits.
Young said he believes many counties are going to take the legal battle to the manufacturers.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," Young said.
The next step is for the law firm to create the formal complaint.

Return to headline | Return to top
Hospitals Sue 12 Pharmaceutical Companies Over Opioids

Dec 4, 2017 | WRKG (AL)

By Bill Riales

Twelve pharmaceutical companies are facing a lawsuit charging they deceptively marked and sold opioids to hospitals. Mobile-based Infirmary Health is one of the hospitals that brought the suit in U.S. District Court in Mississippi. The lawsuit was filed late last week by Lexington, Mississippi attorney Don Barrett. Barrett was also involved in litigation against tobacco companies in the 1990’s that won billions in damages for the state.
The lawsuit alleges the drug makers “aggressively pushed highly addictive, dangerous opioids, falsely representing to doctors that patients would only rarely succumb to drug addiction.”
Just last week, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the opioid crisis the “deadliest drug crisis” in American history.
Among the 12 companies being sued is Purdue Pharma, the maker of oxycontin. Purdue has denied the allegations in the lawsuit as has four other companies.
The hospitals that also include Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center in McComb, Miss. and Monroe County Healthcare Authority in Monroeville, Ala. claim they have incurred expenses by having to treat drug-addicted patients that they would not have normally treated if not for the addiction properties of the prescribed drugs.

Return to headline | Return to top
Corralling the Pills: Rural East Texas Counties Take on Big Pharma Over the Opioid Crisis

Dec 5, 2017 | Dallas Observer (TX)

By Christian McPhate

Travis Strickland has been fighting the war on drugs for more than a decade. He's a sergeant in the Lufkin Police Department's special services division, which includes the street crime and narcotics units. The job used to involve taking apart methamphetamine labs that sprouted like prickly pears around rural Texas. Then Mexican drug cartels took over the meth trade and the labs moved south.
A couple of years ago, Strickland helped bring down two operatives linked to Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's Sinaloa cartel. Locals still recall the arrest; it's not every day an army of federal, state and local law enforcement officers with a couple of helicopters descends on the parking lot of a Buffalo Wild Wings for a 26-pound meth bust.
“It doesn't hurt my feelings that we don't have any more meth labs because I hated taking those things apart,” Strickland says. “We didn't know about the phosphorous gas and all the stuff associated with it. We do now. We suit up now. Back then, you just took a chance not to get blown up.”
Strickland isn't a hardened, swaggering Clint Eastwood type of cop. Clean shaven with a conservative haircut, he could pass for a soccer coach as he takes a seat at a conference table one Tuesday morning in late November at the Alcohol & Drug Council of Deep East Texas, a nonprofit prevention and treatment center that covers 13 counties. Several drug counselors, including Danna Bailey Watts, Tobin Wells and Brad Bell, join him to discuss what has been called a national emergency: the opioid epidemic.
The epidemic is hard to track, they say, because dealers usually can't be found standing on street corners or in dark alleys peddling their drugs. Instead, they're legitimate pain management doctors who, according to a recent federal lawsuit, have been duped by drug manufacturers to prescribe highly addictive narcotics to people suffering chronic pain.
Every day, 145 people in the U.S. overdose on painkillers, and deaths involving controlled prescription drugs have outpaced those of cocaine and heroin combined since 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's 2016 National Drug Threat Assessment. The epidemic has led several East Texas counties, including Bowie, Titus and Upshur, to file federal lawsuits to hold drug manufacturers such as Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer Inc. and Purdue Pharma Inc. responsible for the economic burden of the opioid addiction, estimated to total $78.5 billion nationally.
East Texas counties aren't the only ones filing lawsuits. McLennan County, about 100 miles south of Dallas, recently filed a federal lawsuit against the country's largest opioid manufacturers and wholesale distributors. The move came after county commissioners learned that their county's rate of prescription opioid distribution was higher than state and national averages, according to an Oct. 31 report by the Waco Tribune.
Dallas County may soon join the tide. Dallas-based attorney Jeffery Simon says his law firm is one of three hired by the county “to vet the issue” and determine whether Dallas County will join nine East Texas counties Simon's law firm represents in U.S. district court in East Texas. That would put Dallas in a growing trend of local governments around the nation filing lawsuits against drug manufacturers.
“The goal is to try to recoup the cost of the opioid epidemic,” Upshur County Judge Dean Fowler told the Longview News-Journal. “It costs our taxpayers to take care of people who are addicted to opioids, and the cost to the public is very high.”
Although many rural East Texas counties aren't as densely populated as North Texas or considered high risk for opioid abuse like a metropolitan area, Simon says the financial consequences are sometimes significantly worse because the counties lack resources. That's why rural Texas counties are stepping forward to file lawsuits.
“I think the thing we're interested in is trying to recoup some of our indigent health care costs, if we can,” Rusk County Judge Joel Hale told the News-Journal.
At the Alcohol & Drug Council of Deep East Texas, drug counselors say more than 90 percent of their clients are indigent, many referred by Child Protective Services and the courts. This year, they've seen an uptick in the number of people addicted to opioids seeking treatment — from one or two to about seven or eight per month — but still deal with quite a few meth addicts, which many say is the real epidemic still affecting Texas.
“But when someone comes in, they could be using several drugs,” Bailey Watts says. “We ask them what they are using at the time, and if they say meth, we list meth. So, to me, we don't get a good count.”
Strickland says most of the people his department deals with, often on more than one occasion, have several addictions.
“Meth addicts, cocaine addicts, crack addicts, they also use pills,” he says. “When we hit houses on a meth warrant, we'll also find Xanax, hydrocodone and OxyContin.”
Sales pitch
According to Upshur County's lawsuit, the opioid epidemic can be traced to advertisements, or “pain vignettes,” as they became known, that depicted patients in physically demanding jobs and indicated that opioids offered long-term pain relief and functional improvement. They were part of a “deceptive marketing scheme” and one of several practices the county claims drug companies such as Purdue Pharma used to change doctors' views toward opioids.
This change became evident from the increase in private insurance claims in opioid-related diagnoses in Texas from 2007-16, with San Antonio showing the largest increase at 141 percent, followed by Dallas at 41 percent, according to data from Fair Health, a nonprofit organization that tracks health care costs and health insurance information.
Doctors weren't the only ones changing their views. The National Institute on Drug Addiction reported that teenagers nationwide viewed prescription opioids such as Vicodin and OxyContin as less dangerous than heroin. But according to a 2016 report by the Texas Department of Health Services and The Council on Alcohol & Drug Abuse, "a person addicted to prescription drugs needs a stronger dose each time to experience the same sensation of euphoria, and that stronger pull can lead to heroin, which is additionally alluring because it costs less [than opioids] and is easily accessible."
Over the past two decades, the typical dosage of opioids prescribed per person increased dramatically in the U.S. and Canada, from 180 morphine milligram equivalents — the unit used to measure opioids — in 1999 to 640 MME in 2015. The drugs were more often prescribed in rural communities among white populations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the same time period, more than 183,000 deaths from prescription opioids were reported in the U.S., and millions of Americans are now addicted, says a June 2017 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine written by several researchers from the University of Toronto, the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute and Sunnybrook Research Institute.
“The crisis arose in part because physicians were told that the risk of addiction was low when opioids were prescribed for chronic pain,” they wrote.
Before the 1990s, doctors generally prescribed opioids for pain related to surgery recovery, cancer or end-of-life care. Using them for chronic pain, the lawsuit points out, was discouraged. Not enough evidence showed that opioids improved a person's ability to overcome chronic pain. To change these views, certain drug companies used branded and unbranded advertisements that, according to the lawsuit, showed the purported benefits of opioids for chronic pain patients. The companies also employed sales representatives who marketed directly to doctors and medical staff, and they hired speakers who gave the false impression that they were “providing unbiased and medically accurate presentations when they were, in fact, presenting a script prepared” by drugmakers.
“The marketing efforts of certain drug companies coalesced with what was called the pain management movement of the 1980s and 1990s, where the thesis was that the epidemic of untreated pain and the people who were suffering with pain was inhumane and the aversion that physicians had to prescribing narcotics to treat moderate pain should be modified,” Simon says. “They should be more liberally prescribing narcotics — opioid medication — as a standard treatment protocol.”
Certain drug companies also funded doctors known as “key opinion leaders,” or “KOLs,” whose professional reputations became dependent on promoting a pro-opioid message. They wrote articles and books supporting opioid therapy for chronic pain, participated in favorable research studies suggested by drugmakers, and served on committees that developed treatment guidelines and on boards of pro-opioid advocacy groups and professional societies.
“Pro-opioid doctors are one of the most important avenues that [drugmakers] use to spread their false and deceptive statements about the risks and benefits of long-term opioid use,” according to the lawsuit. “[Drugmakers] know that doctors rely heavily and less critically on their peers for guidance.”
Strickland characterizes it this way: “If you go on a dark street corner in the middle of the night and find some heroin and shoot it up, you know you're doing the wrong thing. You go to the doctor after back surgery and he gives you medicine, you trust that he is doing you right — only to later realize that you've become an addict.”
It's a realization that East Texan Cameron McAdoo made in the summer of 2016 when he sought treatment from Hiway 80 recovery center in Longview. McAdoo says a doctor prescribed opioids because he suffers from chronic pain caused by neurofibermitosis type 1. He soon found himself taking more than he was supposed to take in a day. He says the pain medication made him irritable and unpleasant to be around. He lost his house, his kids and his wife before he decided to seek treatment.
“Well, one thing I [had to] do in order to be honest with myself and doctors is tell them I am an addict and not to give me opiates,” he says. “Addiction is an everyday battle, and it's not easy.”
A series of epidemics
At the Alcohol & Drug Council of Deep East Texas, Strickland compares the opioid epidemic to the crack epidemic of the 1980s.
“One day everything was fine,” he says. “Then, overnight, everyone got murdered.” He says Lufkin had 17 murders in a year at the height of the crack epidemic in the late ’80s, and nearly 10 percent of its 32,000 residents were heavily involved in drugs and alcohol, according to a 1989 study by the Lufkin Police Department. It led to the formation of the narcotics unit.
The story was much the same when the meth epidemic cut a path like a twister across Texas in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the media began to publish reports about meth and its devastating effects.
“Everyone who is using it is going to die, but that is not really true,” Strickland says. “There is a lot of hype, but the thing about opioids is it's always been here. Think about it. Everyone has taken a pill — a pain pill or muscle relaxer — out of grandma's closest. It's always been available. I just think now, for whatever reason, the media is really grabbing onto it and exposing the fact that it is a problem. I don't think it's become a problem. I think it's always been a problem.”
Government officials have been trying to deal with the issue in part by holding drug manufacturers responsible for implementing prescription drug monitoring programs. In May 2007, Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, and its three senior executives — top lawyer Howard Udell, former medical director Paul Goldenheim and President Michael Friedman — pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges that they had misled regulators, doctors and patients about the risk of addiction associated with OxyContin, which garnered $2.8 billion in revenue between 1995 and 2001, according to a New York Times report. They agreed to pay $600 million in criminal and civil penalties, one of the largest amounts ever paid by a drug manufacturer.
“Nearly six years and longer ago, some employees made, or told other employees to make, certain statements about OxyContin to some health care professionals that were inconsistent with the FDA,” according to a company statement. “We accept responsibility for those past misstatements and regret that they were made.”
Robert Josephson, a Purdue spokesman, says the company has taken several steps since 2007 to limit and monitor the marketing of its FDA-approved opioid pain medication. It has reformulated OxyContin with abuse-deterrent technology, supported national and community-based efforts to prevent opioid abuse, and imposed strict internal compliance programs to hold employees accountable.
“We are deeply troubled by the opioid crisis,” Josephson says. “We are dedicated to being part of the solution.”
To do so, the company has given grants to the National Sheriffs Association to provide officers with the overdose rescue drug Naloxene and committed $3 million to help form private-public partnerships with the Commonwealth of Virginia to enhance its prescription drug monitoring program. It recently announced a partnership with Project Lazarus and Safe Kids North Carolina to support statewide medicine disposal activities and conduct research to evaluate the effects of community-based prevention programs on opioid-related overdoses, abuse and diversion.
It also donated $1 million to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy to establish PMP InterConnect, a system to help states share prescription data to help deter doctor-shopping across state lines. It's used in more than 40 states, Josephson says.
In addition, Purdue has developed Researched Abuse, Diversion and Addiction-Related Surveillance, known as RADARS, a system to measure rates of abuse, misuse and diversion across the nation. It's also partnering with the Connecticut Governor's Prevention Partnership to run public service announcements about the risks of prescription opioids.
Josephson pointed to an editorial that appeared in the Wall Street Journalearlier this year that claimed state attorneys general are simply using trials to pad their budgets.
“Governments are farming out the legal work to trial attorneys who front the bills in return for a share, typically 20 [percent] of the reward,” the Journal's editorial board wrote. “States used this contingency-fee model to squeeze $206 billion from the tobacco companies in the 1990s, and the ringleader of that effort, former Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore, is assisting with the opioid raids.”
The Journal further claimed that although Ohio argues that prescription opioids are a gateway to street drugs and that deceptive marketing practices “resulted in the explosion in heroin use,” the vast majority of patients who take prescription painkillers don't get hooked on heroin.
Purdue filed a response to Ohio's lawsuit in September, saying it should be thrown out because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin for use as a painkiller and its safety warnings.
“Unlike suits brought against tobacco makers … cases focusing on opioids are targeting a government-regulated product,” according to a Sept. 9 Bloomberg report. “That means judges must defer to the FDA's finding that the painkillers are safe and effective, and that Purdue properly disclosed addiction risks on its warning label, according to the company's filing.”
Josephson says that Purdue, Johnson & Johnson, and some lawyers for cities and counties want the more than 60 federal lawsuits filed in the U.S. so far to be combined. U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance of Louisiana warned that states and local governments faced serious legal hurdles that could derail their big-tobacco style bid for a multibillion-dollar payout, according to a Nov. 30 Bloomberg report.
“There are serious threshold issues when it comes to whether these governmental entities can sue for these damages,” Vance told attorneys.
Tightening the pipeline
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration placed hydrocodone combination products and other opioid drugs in a more restrictive category in October 2014, making them harder for doctors to prescribe and patients to obtain. Alcohol & Drug Council of Deep East Texas drug counselor Bailey Watts was working for a methadone clinic in McKinney when the DEA made the change.
“I think the schedule change made it a bigger problem,” she says. “We noticed a change in heroin users who were saying they were using it because they couldn't get their pills anymore.”
Prosecutors around the country also began incarcerating more people, including parents, for opioid use. The Good Men Project, a media company, said in a June 29 report that this has placed a greater burden on the struggling foster care system. On any given day in the U.S., roughly 450,000 children are in foster care. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana and Minnesota accounted for 65 percent of the foster care increase, “much of it due to the opioid crisis,” according to the report.
“Just looking at the headlines in every state, one can see that data showing that our foster care systems are bursting at the seams with the increases of children coming into care,” Connie Going, the CEO of the Adoption Advocacy Center, is quoted as saying in the report.
Strickland points out that drug courts were established in 2001 to help people who commit crimes like theft to fuel their addiction. All Texas counties with populations exceeding 550,000 received federal and other funds to establish the drug courts, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The Criminal Justice Policy Council released a study in 2002 that found individuals who complete the drug court programs have considerably lower recidivism rates over three years. “It's pretty successful and more so than I thought it would be, especially if you are stealing to support your habit but not if you are a drug dealer,” Strickland says.
The DEA also implemented a national prescription drug takeback program in 2004 to provide a safe and convenient means of disposing of prescription drugs, as well as education about the potential for abuse. The program has collected more than 8.1 million pounds of drugs in 13 years. Last April, more than 450 tons of prescription drugs were collected at nearly 5,500 sites, including the Broadway Square Mall in Tyler, the parking lot of the Kilgore Police Department and the Church on the Rock in Daingerfield.
Texas legislators passed a law in 2009 to strengthen the prescription monitoring program, and the state pharmacy board has adopted, modified and recommended several changes to improve the program over the years. For example, a rule was adopted in September to require pharmacists to enter dispensing information in the program's database within one business day of dispensing controlled substances. The board is also developing red-flag indicators, to begin in January, for potentially harmful prescribing patterns or patient activity.
The state now requires programs like the Alcohol & Drug Council of Deep East Texas to start sending their clients with opioid addiction to medically assisted treatment centers such as methadone clinics to help them kick their habits. Most treatment centers, however, require clients to be detoxed first, and there are no longer any detox clinics in the Lufkin or Beaumont areas because of a lack of funding, Bailey Watts says.
Instead, counselors send clients to Austin, Dallas, Houston, Tyler or Waco. The waiting list for detox is usually two weeks, so county jails and prisons have become, by default, major detox centers, according to the 2017 regional needs assessment by the Region 5 Prevention Resource Center, which covers 15 East Texas counties.
“So for all of us who have been in the field a long time, it's hard to get our head around it,” says Wells, who's been working at the Alcohol & Drug Council of Deep East Texas for more than a decade.
Strickland says pharmacists and doctors in Lufkin participate in what's known as the triplicate program. It requires doctors to give each patient a hard copy of a prescription to be taken to a pharmacy instead of faxing it or calling it in. Some pharmacists require a patient to sign for the medication, but Strickland says they can't force patients to sign it.
“You don't have to sign for OxyContin, but you've got to sign for Sudafed,” he says.
For the past five years, doctors in this part of East Texas have also been requiring patients to sign pain management agreements promising they won't get any type of pain medications from any other doctors in town.
“Not all doctors jumped on board at first,” Strickland says. “But over time, because of the liability, they are now usually the ones who call us first.”
More addicts, more business
About 10 years ago in the Lufkin area, drug dealers selling opiates (drugs derived from the poppy plant) and opioids (manufactured drugs that mimic opiates) were mostly white, but that “old stereotype is no longer there,” Strickland says. He still sees more white people using opioids and opiates but claims more minorities are dealing them because the potential for making money has grown as obtaining prescriptions has become harder. OxyContin sells for $40 to $50 a pill, depending on its strength.
“Sometimes there is a lull where it is hard to get Oxy or something like that,” Strickland says. “It is probably the most fluctuating price that we have. Most dope, you can buy crack for this much, meth for this much, heroin for this much. It's almost set in stone. But the pill market fluctuates on the amount that is in town and how much is readily available.”
When the lull happens, Strickland says, pharmacy burglaries increase.
Wells says some clients describe vans full of people that travel to Houston and drop each passenger off at different pain management clinics. He or she would answer a few questions to get a prescription for pain pills and Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, or what Wells calls “the cocktail.” Then they would rotate until each person had visited all the clinics.
“That's how they feed their habits,” Wells says.
In 2015, federal authorities claimed two Dallas men, Stanley James Jr. and John Ware, implemented a similar technique when they used drivers to pick up homeless people to pose as patients at various pain management clinics. Ware owned a series of clinics in North Texas that federal authorities claimed he operated as “pill mills.” James pleaded guilty in May 2016 to one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. Ware pleaded guilty in April.
At the Alcohol & Drug Council of Deep East Texas, counselors used to see only one heroin addict each month, but now they're seeing four or five. “We're relating it to that it is so much harder to get the pills, that the pill pusher is turning their clients into heroin addicts,” Wells says.
But Strickland says it's the opposite locally. “They can't get their heroin [which comes from the Dallas area], and they're reverting to pills,” he says. “They'll tell you right now that the pills aren't as good as their street-level heroin. They would rather use heroin instead of crushing pills and shooting it.”
The first big opioid and opiate dealer to hit the Lufkin area came from Fort Worth a couple of years ago. He was visiting a friend and couldn't find any pills or heroin to buy, so he moved his operations to East Texas. Strickland says it's hard for law enforcement to bust these type of dealers. No one wants to snitch, he says, because it's harder to get opioids and opiates. The dealer operated for about three months until one of his clients overdosed and a family member came forward to alert law enforcement.
"The [prescription form] opiate dealers is the fastest-growing form of narcotics trafficking we are seeing," Strickland says. "There is a growing demand for these type of prescription drugs, and our local dealers are accommodating the demand by having the supply available."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that overdose deaths involving opioids have quadrupled since 1999, but Strickland says in a rural setting like East Texas, it's harder to track overdose deaths because there's no medical examiner. Justices of the peace sign death certificates when people die outside of hospitals.
“A lot of overdoses are maybe listed as a heart attack,” he says. “Autopsies cost money. If you are the JP, you have a budget and can only do so many a year. We want to save those autopsies for murders.”
Strickland and the drug counselors point out other ways they're trying to combat the opioid epidemic in East Texas. They mention the difficulty of dealing with low-income families who receive government assistance and continue the addiction cycle because, in East Texas, they live in what Wells calls “plumes” — basically, little pockets of family living next to each other. That makes it harder for clients who want to get clean because they can't escape their environment.
They also mention Leo the Drug Lion, who goes to the local schools to educate children about the dangers of addiction. They call him a rock star.
Strickland says his department is working five or six active investigations involving pill dealers and buying 200 to 300 pills at a time, but like many law enforcement officials, he's frustrated with the system's inability to differentiate between dealers and users and says authorities need to make the pills more unattractive to sell. He'd like to see stiffer penalties for opioid dealers, similar to what laws did with mandatory minimums when the crack epidemic swept across the country in the 1980s.
But even then, he's not sure it will make a difference.
“We've lost the war on drugs,” he says. “We're just trying to win a few battles here and there. As long as there is a demand for narcotics, there will always be drug dealers.”

Return to headline | Return to top
Clark County, Reno prepare to move forward with opioid lawsuits, despite warnings from AG

Dec 5, 2017 | The Nevada Independent (NV)

By Riley Snyder

At least two Nevada localities are preparing to move forward with lawsuits against major opioid manufacturers and distributors, despite continued opposition by Attorney General Adam Laxalt.
Both Clark County and the City of Reno have scheduled hearings and potential votes this week on whether to retain private law firms to pursue lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, even as Laxalt’s office has engaged in a multi-state suit and warned Reno officials that a separate suit could jeopardize the state’s chances of emerging with a significant stake in a potentially large global settlement.
Democratic Clark County Commissioners Steve Sisolak and Chris Giunchigliani, both of whom are running for governor, as is Republican Laxalt, jointly requested an agenda item during Tuesday’s meeting to authorize legal action against opioid drug manufacturers, through the private firm of Eglet Prince.
Sisolak said he (without Giunchigliani) met with private attorney Peter Wetherall — who presented on possible litigation against opioid companies to the city of Reno last month — but decided to go with Eglet Prince because of the firm’s history with complex medical cases, including a major suits involving Hepatitis C outbreaks in Las Vegas.
“These are pretty involved, intricate cases, so we want to hire somebody with the best chance to get a recovery for the county,” he said.
According to an agenda item, the firm — which counts Democratic state Senate majority leader and attorney general candidate Aaron Ford as a partner — has already “researched appropriate claims, potential damage claims, and requests for remedial measures for almost a year” and would be ready to file a suit immediately on behalf of the county. It notes the firm would take on all potential costs associated with the suit, and cap their stake in any potential damages or settlement at 25 percent. An Eglet Prince representative declined to comment on Tuesday.
The potential suit comes even as Laxalt warned Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve earlier in November that any additional litigation could “unintentionally undermine” Nevada’s involvement in a 41-state suit against opioid manufacturers and could “thwart” the state’s chances of receiving a future cash settlement.
Sisolak said that neither Eglet Prince nor District Attorney Steve Wolfson — who sat in on a meeting with Sisolak and the trial attorney firm — felt a suit filed by the county would be a concern for the state. A Laxalt spokeswoman didn’t return an email seeking comment.
Reno council members are also scheduled to discuss Wednesday a vote on a potential lawsuit — a priority for Schieve, who first detailed her desire to initiate legal action against opioid companies in October.
According to the agenda, city council members will discuss a potential agreement with the private attorney Peter Wetherall, who will be instructed to “pursue all civil remedies against the manufacturers of prescription opiates and those in the chain of distribution of prescription opiates responsible for the opioid epidemic which is harming” the city of Reno.
A background briefing for the city council members notes that no city-specific study shows the effects of opioid abuse, but noted that Nevada as a state has been hit hard by over-prescriptions and overdoses of opioid drugs.
The proposed agreement notes that Wetherall and any associate attorneys representing the city will be paid approximately 30 percent of any damages or monetary relief granted by a court, but notes “there is no reimbursement of litigation expenses if there is no recovery.” The agreement also states that the firm will compensate the city if it’s ordered to pay legal fees for the defendants.
Despite that, Wetherall may not end up representing the city at all — in an open letter to the city council dated Dec. 4, the attorney said that proposals made by other law firms — Eglet Prince and Bradley, Drendel & Jeanney — had changed the equation, as his firm was now no longer the only offering legal representation to the city.
“Now that others have also expressed an interest in representing Reno, I think it only fair they be given a full and fair opportunity to compete for your business,” he said in a letter.
Wetherall suggested that council members approve moving forward with a lawsuit, but delay the decision on which firm to retain through a bid request.
Nevada has the fourth-highest drug overdose mortality rate, 20.7 per 100,000 residents in 2010, and the state’s doctors write 94 painkiller prescriptions for every 100 residents. The CDC counted 619 drug-overdose deaths in the state in 2015.

Return to headline | Return to top
Jacksonville plans to sue opiod manufacturers

Dec 4, 2017 | JDNews.com (NC)

By Kelsey Stiglitz

The city of Jacksonville will swear-in for four council members and present its plan for a civil suit against wholesale opioid drug manufacturers during the city council meeting this week.
Council members elected in November and taking their oaths of office Tuesday are Jerry Bittner, Ward 2 representative; Brian Jackson, Ward 1 representative; Randy Thomas, member at large; and Robert “Bob” Warden, member at large.
Following the 5:30 p.m. swearing in ceremony, a reception will be held at City Hall before the city council meeting begins at 7 p.m.
Richard Woodruff, Jacksonville city manager, and John Carter, city attorney, will present the proposed law suit, declaring the opioid epidemic a public nuisance and having the mayor authorizing representation in the suit.
According to Woodruff, the Jacksonville Police Department spent about $1.6 million in 2016 dealing with mental health and substance abuse issues.
Leading the case is Charles Ellis of Ward and Smith Attorneys at Law in New Bern, who contacted the city attorney suggesting the city sue big players in drug sales, helping recover costs of emergency services and public safety associated with the opioid epidemic.
The contract with Ward and Smith is based upon recovery, said Woodruff.
If the claims recover money in the suit, the firm will receive 30 percent. If the suit is unsuccessful for the city, however, the city will not be charged.
“There is no financial exposure to the city,” Woodruff said.
In fact, this model of suing commercial drug suppliers has been followed by hundreds of cities across the nation in hopes to help with public safety costs, Woodruff said.
Ward and Smith will work with eight different law firms, including McHugh Fuller Law Group, to hold commercial wholesalers of opioids responsible for prescription drugs making their way to illegal markets.
“We’re not talking about suing local pharmacies or doctors,” Woodruff said. “The point we’re making is the drug industry has failed to comply with regulations keeping up with prescription drugs.”
Suppliers to pharmacies and hospitals allowing unregulated quantities of drugs to be delivered to doctors and pharmacies are one of links in the chain to the opioid epidemic.
Last month, the council approved city funding for a mental health and substance abuse center in cooperation with Onslow County, Cateret County, City of Jacksonville, Onslow Memorial Hospital and Cateret General Hospital.
Scheduled to open in July 2018, planning for the short-term center is underway, and is budgeted at $1.6 million.
The meeting will be held at Jacksonville City Hall at 815 New Bridge St. in Jacksonville.

Return to headline | Return to top
More counties pursue, consider suing amid opioid crisis

Dec 5, 2017 | Associated Press

By Staff

A North Carolina county is suing drug manufacturers and distributors it says caused the local opioid crisis, while another county may pursue legal action, as well.
The Winston-Salem Journal reports that Yadkin County filed a lawsuit naming 24 defendants in U.S. District Court on Dec. 1. Officials are requesting a jury trial and unspecified monetary damages to cover the medical care of patients suffering opioid-related addiction.
The StarNews of Wilmington reports that Brunswick County Commissioners declared the opioid crisis a public nuisance on Monday, authorizing county staff to pursue any necessary measure to abate the nuisance, including retaining legal counsel.
Local and state governments across the country have filed litigation amid the opioid crisis, including North Carolina’s Buncombe County in November.

Return to headline | Return to top
Jacksonville City Council postpones vote on opioid litigation

Dec 4, 2017 | The Anniston Star (AL)

By Patrick McCreless

City leaders Monday postponed joining a cross-jurisdictional lawsuit against some nationwide drug distributors to learn more about the litigation and its possible effects.
The lawsuit, if successful, would help Jacksonville and other participating cities recoup money spent dealing with the repercussions of opioid abuse. Prescription opioid abuse has risen sharply nationally over the last decade, becoming a significant concern among health experts and the government and medical officials dealing with the crisis.
The remainder of this article is under paywall: https://www.annistonstar.com/news/jacksonville/jacksonville-city-council-postpones-vote-on-opioid-litigation/article_5858c38e-d967-11e7-b871-f3ba13a2c72c.html

Return to headline | Return to top
Brunswick may seek legal action for opioid crisis

Dec 4, 2017 | Star News Online (NC)

By Mackenzie Holland

Brunswick County Commissioners have declared the opioid crisis a public nuisance and may seek legal action against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
By declaring the crisis a public nuisance, county staff is authorized to pursue measures to abate the nuisance, including retaining legal counsel to seek damages and cost recovery from opioid manufacturers and distributors.
Commissioners adopted a resolution “to declare and abate a public nuisance regarding the manufacture and distribution of opioids.” The resolution states that the opioid crisis is “having an extended and far reaching impact on the public, health and safety of residents and citizens of Brunswick County and must be abated.”
The county authorized staff to “take all action necessary” to abate the opioid crisis.
County Attorney Bob Shaver said not only does the opioid crisis come at an individual cost, but a significant county cost as well.
“The county and the county’s use of taxpayer funds has been greatly impacted because as this crisis continues you see greater expenses for treatment, greater expenses for law enforcement and first responders to deal with the issues related to overdose and addiction, and you see an impact on social services and the number of children and infants that are born addicted,” Shaver said.
Commissioner Pat Sykes said she supports the resolution because it’s going “straight to the manufacturers.”
“As most of you know, the problem is not just a local problem, it’s nationwide and it starts at the top with our pharmaceutical companies,” Sykes said.

Return to headline | Return to top
Brown County committees recommend joining opioid lawsuit

Dec 5, 2017 | Fox 11(WI)

By Ben Krumholz

Brown is close to becoming the latest Wisconsin county to join a lawsuit targeting drug makers.
The counties believe the companies' marketing campaigns led to the opioid epidemic. However, the companies targeted say that isn't the case.
Brown County’s executive committee unanimously approved a resolution to join the lawsuit, making it the second committee to do that in the past week. The full county board still needs to approve the move.
With no out of pocket costs, Brown County Corporation Counsel David Hemery sees little downside to joining the other counties in the lawsuit.
“The cost I see into joining this is more in time and resources,” said Hemery.
Online records show 48 of Wisconsin's 72 counties are part of the federal lawsuit targeting a handful of large drug makers. A majority of the counties in our area are already part of the suit, which accuses the companies of making false claims about the dangers of opioids in order to make a profit.
“There is really not any area that you can think of that this opioid crisis does not effect,” said Hemery.
According to Hemery, among the areas impacted in Brown County include increased crime, jail overcrowding, more need for human services, and foster care for children of drug abusers.
The companies named in the lawsuit have said they are not to blame.
“We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense,” read a statement from Purdue Pharma, one of the companies named in the suit.
Endo Health Solutions issued a statement saying its “top priorities include patient safety and ensuring that patients with chronic pain have access to safe and effective therapeutic options.”
“If we are able to succeed in a lawsuit and if we are able to bring anything back to the county, hopefully it can be put into other treatment or prevention programs for this,” said Patrick Buckley, a Brown County supervisor.
Hemery estimates a resolution to the suit could take two or three years.

Return to headline | Return to top
Nashville plots possible lawsuit against opioid makers

Dec 4, 2017 | WKRN (TN)

By Nick Caloway

The Metro Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday night to authorize Mayor Megan Barry to file suit against makers of prescription opioids.
The council will consider a resolution “authorizing the Mayor to employ the law firm of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, as special counsel, on a contingent fee basis, to investigate, and if appropriate, pursue claims against manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioids that have wrongfully caused drug addiction in Davidson County and resulting economic harm to the Metropolitan Government.”
The Metro Council resolution cites “wrongful conduct” by opioid manufacturers as a basis for a potential lawsuit.
If a lawsuit is filed, Nashville would join more than a hundred other cities and states suing drug companies over dangerous opioids.
David Anthony, an attorney with Bone McAllester Norton PLLC in Nashville, which is not involved in the potential lawsuit, told News 2 lawsuits against big pharmaceutical companies are more appealing since so many other cities are pursuing legal action.
“Frankly it’s a matter of timing,” said Anthony. “If we were the only community in America looking into this, it probably would not be something that would be enticing, as a law firm or us as a community. But there’s strength in numbers.”
The potential lawsuit would seek compensation for money spent my Metro on battling addiction.

Return to headline | Return to top
County’s opioid lawsuit filed Monday

Dec 4, 2017 | The Morehead News (KY)

By Brad Stacy

Rowan County Fiscal Court has officially filed a lawsuit against major opioid distributors accusing them of the wrongful distribution of prescription opioids.
The 165-page lawsuit was filed in the Northern Division of the Eastern District of the U.S. District Court in Ashland on Monday, accusing statutory negligence, civil conspiracy, fraud, and other complaints.
The complaint names 19 defendants, three of which operate locally in Kentucky.
AmerisourceBergen operates distribution centers in Louisville and, until recently, in Paducah, according to the lawsuits. Cardinal Health has distribution operations through a Radcliff call center, and McKesson operates a distribution center in Louisville.
The three companies are the largest opioid distribution companies in the U.S. with combined annual revenue of $400 billion.
Counties in the lawsuit say that unlawful conduct by these wholesale distributors “is responsible for the volume of prescription opioids plaguing” communities.
“The defendants were selling and/or manufacturing dangerous drugs statutorily categorized as posing a high potential for abuse and severe dependence,” the complaint said. “The defendants knowingly traded in drugs that presented a high degree of danger if prescribed incorrectly or diverted to other than legitimate medical, scientific, or industrial channels.”
The lawsuit says that the defendants “owed a high duty of care to ensure that these drugs were only used for proper medical purposes, but chose profit over prudence, for the safety of the community, and an award of punitive damages is appropriate, as punishment and a deterrence.”
The Court requests a trial by jury and compensation for past and future damages and costs “to abate the ongoing public nuisance caused by the opioid epidemic.”
Rowan County joins about 40 other counties filing the lawsuit.
Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA) represents the distributors and their senior vice president John Parker said although the epidemic isn’t to be taken lightly, the blame is being directed in the wrong direction.
“As distributors, we understand the tragic impact the opioid epidemic has on communities across the country. We are deeply engaged in the issue and are taking our own steps to be part of the solution – but we aren’t willing to be scapegoats,” Parker said.
Parker said distributors are logistics companies that arrange for the safe and secure storage, transport, and delivery of medicines from manufacturers to pharmacies, hospitals, long-term care facilities, and others based on prescriptions from licensed physicians. They don’t make medicines, market medicines, prescribe medicines, or dispense them to consumers.
“Given our role, the idea that distributors are solely responsible for the number of opioid prescriptions written defies common sense and lacks understanding of how the pharmaceutical supply chain actually works and how it is regulated,” he said. “We are ready to have a serious conversation about solving a complex problem and are eager to work with political leaders and all stakeholders in finding forward-looking solutions.”
The alliance also stated that the DEA sets annual production quotas for opioids. Distributors report controlled substance orders that are filled and those that are deemed suspicious to the DEA, and have robust controls in place to monitor distribution.
“Wholesalers devote millions of dollars to state-of-the-art, anti-diversion monitoring programs and processes,” they said. “Distributors regularly report suspicious activity and — when appropriate — cut off the supply of products to customers when ‘red flags’ of possible drug diversion or other illegal activity are observed.”
The defendants said the distributors are strongly committed to finding systemic solutions to the challenges that contributed to the opioid epidemic.
“They, like all actors in the system, recognize that the opioid epidemic was a systemic failure and that improvements are needed across the board,” said the HDA. “Distributors stand ready to work with all players across the system — physicians, pharmacists, manufacturers, federal and state regulators, law enforcement, and others — to identify and stop rogue actors who intentionally undermine patient safety and the public health.”
The suit doesn't specify the amount of money the county is seeking because the estimated costs associated with the opioid crisis is still being calculated.
The agreement between the Court and attorneys says the county will pay the firms 30 percent of any award, but won't bear any upfront costs or have to pay if there's no monetary recovery.

Return to headline | Return to top
County Hires Law Firm to Sue Those Responsible for Drug Epidemic

Dec 4, 2017 | Cape May County Herald (NJ)

By Al Campbell

In the current drug (opioid) war, it seems that freeholders have taken heart from a quotation by Sir Winston Churchill, and fight back.
"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." It was given to bolster the spirits of the British as they were confronting Nazi bombings and more.
The words of Acting Prosecutor Robert Johnson were fresh in freeholders’ ears from earlier at Nov. 28 caucus meeting.
As in war, there was a casualty report, killed and wounded in action.
Johnson spoke of 30 fatal overdoses, 177 overdoses and 152 uses of Narcan to revive those who overdosed on heroin and those statistics were until Nov. 2. Since then the numbers have likely increased.
Daily, police radio dispatches report overdoses in many towns. Some reports tell of patients who are unconscious and unresponsive, many due to heroin. It is not uncommon to hear three to five of those reports some days.
With each of those calls, a variety of government services may be used, from police and emergency medical technicians to nurses who pronounce victims deceased.
A check of prescription prices for a dose of Narcan in various pharmacies found the cost ranges from $135 to $150 per dose.
If a patient needs rehabilitation services, those too may be billed to the county.
Because such costs are rising with the epidemic proportion of opioid use, the board authorized the New York law firm of Simmons Hanly Conroy "to evaluate the county's legal options to recover appropriate governmental costs and other damages from all and any responsible party or parties, including pharmaceutical manufacturers."
According to the resolution, "This may include, but is not limited to pre-suit investigation and the initiation of litigation of a court of competent jurisdiction."
There is "no cost to the county associated with this engagement unless the (firm) recovers monetary award in favor of the county. In the event of such recovery, the (firm) shall be entitled to payment of its costs incurred on the county's behalf and 25 percent of the total of the recovery."

Return to headline | Return to top

Commentary and FYIs

Opioid lawsuit: Vegas lawyer says Reno should use competitive process to choose attorney

Dec 4, 2017 | Reno Gazette Journal (NV)

By Anjeanette Damon

The Las Vegas lawyer who first pitched the city of Reno on suing opioid manufacturers says the Reno City Council should use a competitive process to select a lawyer rather than just hand him the contract at Wednesday's meeting.
In a letter to the city council, lawyer Peter Wetherall said he's happy the city has taken him up on suggestion to sue opioid manufacturers but wants to give a Reno law firm a fair shot at earning the business, too.
"As you know, when we first discussed this issue, my team and I were the only ones offering representation on terms realistic for the city to consider," Wetherall wrote. "Now that others have also expressed an interest in representing Reno, I think it only fair they be given a full and fair opportunity to compete for your business."
On Wednesday, the council will decide whether to sign an agreement with Wetherall's firm to represent the city in a claim against pain pill manufacturers for what it has cost the city to deal with the addiction epidemic. But Wetherall said the council should instead undertake a competitive process rather than simply award his firm the contract.
"I stand by my proposal, and remain confident that my excellent team of litigators is the best to retain, but your consideration of other firms is welcome and warranted," Wetherall wrote.
After Wetherall pitched the city, the Reno law firm Bradley, Drendel & Jeanney has asked the council to consider its services, saying the business would be better handled locally.
Bill Bradley said his firm would charge a contingency fee of 25 percent of any settlement won by the city. Wetherall's firm would charge a 30 percent contingency fee.
The idea of suing the opioid manufacturers has been championed by Mayor Hillary Schieve, who has been troubled by the plague of addiction that has gripped the state.
Her effort, however, has sparked a backlash from Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is part of a multi-state investigation into whether opioid manufacturers have engaged in deceptive trade practices. Laxalt has said Reno could undermine the statewide effort to win a settlement from the companies.
Schieve argues the city's lawsuit could complement the state's effort, not undermine it.
Wetherall credited Reno with bringing enough publicity to the issue that other Nevada cities and counties are considering similar lawsuit.
"As I indicated the last time we met, what’s most important to me is that Nevada cities and counties have a seat at the table in this litigation, even if those cities and counties don’t end up retaining my team, and even in the face of Attorney General Laxalt’s directive to stand down," Wetherall wrote. "Your leadership in this regard assures that other Nevada cities and counties will follow, and thankfully so."

Return to headline | Return to top
It Doesn't Take a Genius to Solve the Opioid Crisis (EDITORIAL)

Dec 5, 2017 | Vice News

By Maia Szalavitz

It's become an almost daily routine: Some panel, discussion, summit, commission, hearing, project, or report claims to have the answer to America’s historically deadly opioid crisis. The latest pathetic “solution," of course, is the (weirdly disputed) emergence of longtime Republican pollster, Donald Trump "alternative facts" adviser, and noted public health expert Kellyanne Conway as some kind of alleged "opioid czar." I say alleged because even though Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested last week that she had the gig, the White House later said she was merely continuing existing work on the issue.
Who’s telling the truth? No fucking clue—and it doesn’t really matter. The time for talk is over. In the past three years alone, more than 100,000 Americans have died of opioid overdose. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children—a tremendous loss. Conway is close to President Trump and this news has been taken by some as a signal that he’s finally serious about addressing opioids. But what does that even mean when no new money is being appropriated, healthcare cuts may be on the way, and no actual "drug czar" has been named to coordinate strategy, among other glaring gaps in the administration's response to this disaster?
To genuinely get serious about stopping the bleeding, America needs a new coalition. Advocates for people with addiction and people with pain need to put aside their fears and differences and form a united front to force whoever turns out to be in charge to pay attention. After all, we know what needs to be done, and when we start treating both addiction and pain humanely based on evidence, everyone wins.
First and foremost, we need to make it easier and cheaper to get treatment for addiction with buprenorphine or methadone than it is to buy heroin—or at least give treatment a fighting chance at competing with dealers. Being on these medications cuts the death rate by 50 percent or more, according to numerous studies, and it’s the only approach proven to do so. Get more of these medications to those who need them and we’ll have fewer deaths. It’s really that simple.
Whenever someone is caught “doctor shopping” or inappropriately trying to get opioids—and whenever anyone who has opioid addiction seeks help—they should have immediate access to these medications and alternatives like long-acting naltrexone (Vivitrol) as appropriate, with treatment tailored to the patient’s needs and goals.
FDA director Scott Gottlieb seems to understand the medication issue: He gets this isn’t simply replacing one addiction with another, but providing care that allows people to return to function or at least avoid dying. But he, the Department of Health and Human Services, and Congress need to be pressured to remove cumbersome regulations like special requirements for buprenorphine prescribing and limits on methadone use outside of clinics.
The rules of the public health emergency that has already been declared by the Trump administration might allow this if people like Gottlieb felt empowered to use them—and we have tons of data showing it would help. France, for example, responded to an overdose crisis by allowing all physicians to prescribe buprenorphine without restrictions or special training: Overdose deaths dropped by 75 percent within four years.
For expanded medication access to be most effective, doctors need to be able to prescribe simply as harm reduction—without requiring abstinence or counseling. These and other services that are often helpful shouldn’t be forced on all, but triaged to those who actually want them. This would not only cut costs, but improve both quality (group therapy is better when the people who are in it aren’t just sitting and waiting it out or rolling their eyes at those who try to participate) and outcomes. Law enforcement will need to be educated that prescribing to those who are not yet ready to recover is not criminal, but vital.
Under current law, we could—as cities like New York have in the past—rapidly expand access to maintenance medications. But we need hospitals and emergency rooms to step up and provide it. We need primary care docs, physician’s assistants, and telemedicine, all pulling together. The old rules aren't just not working—they've become deadly. And easy access to maintenance medications will help people in pain, too, by reducing the need for anyone to lie to doctors to get drugs and making the doctor/patient relationship less fraught.
For pain patients, the most critical need is to stop the current assault on those who are already on opioids, particularly attempts to lower dosages without regard to individual circumstances or choices. The forced tapering or outright abandonment of any kind of patient to the tender mercies of the illegal market is associated with more deaths, not fewer.
Consequently, when “pill mills” are busted or doctors stop prescribing for any other reason, every single patient—regardless of their medical condition—needs continuity of care and the ability to make informed choices about their medical future. The DEA, medical boards and attorneys general must be held accountable for what happens to patients—including people with addiction—when they crack down on doctors. Typically, they are left to fend for themselves, without even a referral. This must end.
Doctors seem to have already become far more cautious about prescribing for acute pain—and limited prescribing for chronic pain to those for whom other approaches have failed. Now we need to make sure these limits aren’t harming those who do benefit from opioids.
Marijuana legalization can also help: Nearly a dozen studies now show that medical marijuana is associated with a reduction in use of opioids for both pain and for addiction, as well as a reduction in overdose deaths. The government should also leave other, less harmful substitutes like Kratom alone.
Of course, cheap naloxone needs to be more available to reverse overdoses, safe injection facilities should be approved, drug checking to determine if fentanyl is present should be accessible—all of this needs to be done, too. But the strategy most likely to save the most lives most quickly is to rapidly expand maintenance and stop pushing people out of medical care, even if they misuse drugs.
And, in the long term, we have to decriminalize possession of all drugs and shift the money spent locking people in cages and increasing their risk of overdose death over to providing compassionate, evidence-based treatment.
America’s current system of coercive, demanding and often demeaning care itself creates resistance to treatment. When people see getting help as well, helpful, they seek it, because—believe it or not—active addiction isn’t fun. Heroin prescribing—which has been shown to not only reduce crime and disease but also increase employment—is another example of a harm-reduction approach that should be added to the menu.
Regular readers, of course, will not be surprised by this list: It sums up much of what I’ve covered in this column over the past few years. To genuine opioid experts, little here is even controversial—certainly not expanding maintenance. In the endless meetings Conway sat through during her work on the president's opioid commission, she's almost certainly become familiar with this data, too. What's missing is a united coalition to push her and others who have the power to finally make it happen.

Return to headline | Return to top

Broadcast Media Coverage

WNEM-TV5 News at 9:00am

Dec 5, 2017 | WNEM (CBS)

By Flint, MI

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244058?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Rough Transcript: opioids continue to hook new victims every day. but now... a mid-michigan county says enough is enough. leaders plan to take their war on drugs... to court! tv5's scott wolchek has the details. "literally an unending cost." try to stop the rampage of opioids in genesee county. there are 1 and a half times more prescriptions for opioids in the 9:31 AMcounty- than there are people! "there literally is nobody wh has not been touched by this opioidepidemic." that's why th county commissioners voted unanimously to hire a law firm to take legal action against the companies who make opioids. "there's some comparisons you can do if you look at lawsuits on state levels against the tobacco industry." the complaint isnt written yet- so the exact nature of the lawsuit isnt decided-- but commissioner young says he wants answers and transparency "was this attempted to be advertised or marketed inappropriately? if it was let's make sure that those problems don't happen again." both wayne and oakland counties recently filed a similar lawsuit. commissioner young says he believes many counties are going to take the legal battle to the manufacturers. "this is just the tip of th iceberg." the next step is for the law firm to create the formal complaint-- the board plans to file it shortly.

Return to headline | Return to top
WPBF 25 News at 9:00am

Dec 5, 2017 | WPBF (ABC)

By West Palm Beach, FL

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244413?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Rough Transcript: a new study shows that the opioid crisis is bigger than suspected across the country. sanika: cocaine related overdose deaths are on par with prescription opioid overdose among whites and those have received less coverage. overall cocaine-related deaths are up among blacks, whites and hispanics. palm beach county could start fighting the opioid epidemic, with a lawsuit. stephanie: commissioners will vote this afternoon on whether or not to move forward with a lawsuit accusing the companies of misleading customers leading to addiction. delray beach was the first in the state to sue the companies over the opioid cris.

Return to headline | Return to top
Good Day Wisconsin

Dec 5, 2017 | WLUK (Fox)

By Green Bay, WI

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244415?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Rough Transcript: half of wisconsin's counties are part of a lawsuit targeting drug makers ... and brown county is about to join. fox 11's ben krumholz has our 9:09 AMbalanced coverage. with no out of pocket costs, brown county corporation counsel david hemery sees little downside to joing other counties in the lawsuit targeting large pharmaceutical companies. the cost i see into joing this is more time and resources. online records show 48 of wisconsin's 72 counties are part of the federal lawsuit targeting a handful of large drug makers. a majority of the counties in our area are already part of the suit, which accuses the companies of making false claims about the dangers of opioids in order to make a profit. there is really not any area that you can think of that this opioid crisis does not effect. according to hemery, among the areas impacted in brown county include increased crime, jail overcrowding, more need for human services, and foster care for children of drug abusers. the companies named in the lawsuit have said they are not to blame. a statement from pourude pharma says it vigorously denies allegations in the suit and looks forward to the opportunity to present its defense. endo helath solutions issued a statement saying its top priorities include patient saty and ensuring that patients with chronic pain have access to safe and effective therapeutic options. if we are able to succeed in a lawsuit and if we are able to bring anything back to the county, hopefully it can be put into other treatment or prevention programs for this. the county board is expected to vote on joing the lawsuit in two weeks. in brown county, ben krumholz, fox 11 news. outagamie county is also considering joing the lawsuit.

Return to headline | Return to top
Montana Today

Dec 5, 2017 | KTVM (NBC)

By Bozeman, MT

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244438?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Rough Transcript:

Return to headline | Return to top
Good Morning Nashville on News 2

Dec 5, 2017 | WKRN (ABC)

By Nashville, TN

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244515?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Rough Transcript: the city of nashville is on the verge of filing a lawsuit -- against the makers of prescription opioids. > the metro council will vote tonight to authorize mayor megan barry to hire a lawfirm -- and potentially sue makers and distributors of opioids. the resolution cites wrongful conduct by the companies -- that lead to addiction and death in nashville. a local attorney who is not involved in the case says now that more than a hundred other cities and states have filed lawsuits -- the timing is right for nashville... david anthony / bone mcallester norton pllc: "we're hearing a lot in the news about opioidaddiction. by going after these companies and investigating it now, these companies may be more likely to work out a deal." nikki: the potential lawsuit would seek compensation for money spent by metro to fight opioid addiction.

Return to headline | Return to top
Good Day Wisconsin

Dec 5, 2017 | WLUK (Fox)

By Green Bay, WI

Video Link: http://app.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view/31244568?token=123ee6e7-e0b0-429d-aa55-b5a1a4a00c49
Rough Transcript: brown county is on the verge of joining a majority of the state's 72 other counties in a lawsuit. the suit targets drug makers. it alleges that drug companies aggressively and fraudulently market prescription painkillers, leading to the ongoing opioid crisis. now... a second brown county committee voted unanimously to join the lawsuit. brown county still needs full board approval before joing the suit, but its attorney believes the pros outweigh the cons. there is really not any areas that you can think of that this opioid cris does not effect. the county board will vote on joining the lawsuit in two weeks. outagamie county is also considering joing the lawsuit. brown county's attorney estimates a resolution to the suit could take two or three years.

Return to headline | Return to top

Add recipients

Suggested