Baltimore to take drug distributors to trial over opioids
Corrects headline and lead, adds paragraphs 4-5 to state that J&J settled before trial
By Brendan Pierson
Sept 16 (Reuters) -The city of Baltimore is scheduled to go to trial this week in its $11 billion lawsuit accusing drug distributors McKesson MCK.N and Cencora COR.N of fueling an epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose deaths.
The city, which has been especially hard hit by the opioid crisis, opted out of large national opioid settlements in recent years. It's now hoping it can win more money by taking companies to court on its own. Jury selection is expected to begin on Monday in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, Maryland.
The city accuses Cencora, formerly called AmerisourceBergen, and McKesson of ignoring red flags that opioids they supplied were being diverted into illegal channels. It says the companies must pay the cost of addressing the crisis.
Baltimore had also been prepared to take drugmaker Johnson & Johnson's JNJ.N Janssen to trial over claims that it concealed the risk of addiction when it marketed its relatively little-used, now discontinued opioid drugs Duragesic and Nucynta, but settled over the weekend, according to a court filing on Sunday.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. J&J, which has denied the allegations, declined to comment.
The distributors did not immediately respond to request for comment. In previous cases, they have argued that they followed federal regulations and that unscrupulous doctors and pharmacists were to blame for illicit prescriptions.
Baltimore is one of more than 3,000 local, Native American tribal and state governments across the country that have filed similar lawsuits against drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies over the opioid crisis. The vast majority of those cases have been settled through nationwide agreements, which now total about $46 billion.
In 2022, Baltimore recorded 904 opioid overdose deaths, out of a total population of about 569,000, while the national opioid overdose death rate was about 25 per 100,000.
GOING SOLO
The city joined some other hard-hit jurisdictions around the country in opting out of the national deals. It has already reached its own settlements with several companies ahead of the trial, most recently with pharmacy operator Walgreens WBA.O and drugmaker Teva TEVA.TA, totaling $402.5 million.
Opting out has both potential upside and risk.
San Francisco obtained a $230 million settlement from Walgreens after beating it at trial, which it said was the largest for any local government. West Virginia, another opt out, secured about $1 billion in opioid settlements, a larger recovery per capita than any other state.
The city of Huntington, West Virginia, and its county, however, lost their trial against McKesson, Cencora and distributor Cardinal Health CAH.N after a judge rejected their public nuisance claims, which are similar to Baltimore's. That means they will receive no money from the distributors if they do not get the verdict overturned on appeal.
McKesson supplied about half of Baltimore's opioids between 2006 and 2019, according to U.S. government data. In 2017, it reached a $150 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, under which it admitted that it had failed in its duty to prevent illegal drug sales nationwide.
Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill, who will be presiding over this week's trial, has ruled that jurors will be allowed to hear about that deal.
Cencora is also currently facing a civil lawsuit by the Justice Department over its alleged role in the opioid crisis.
More than 800,000 people in the United States died of opioid overdoses from 1999 through 2023, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The case is Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. Purdue Pharma et al, Circuit Court of Maryland for Baltimore City, No. 24-C-18-000515.
For Baltimore: Bill Carmody of Susman Godfrey
For J&J: Steve Brody of O'Melveny & Myers and Mike Brown of Nelson Mullins
For McKesson: Tim Hester and Chris Eppich of Covington & Burling
For Cencora: Anne Bohnet of Reed Smith
Read more:
Baltimore settles with Teva, Walgreens ahead of scheduled opioid trial
McKesson in record $150 million U.S. settlement over suspicious drug orders
U.S. sues AmerisourceBergen, says distributor helped ignite opioid epidemic
Top law firms in US opioid lawsuits to get hundreds of millions in fees
First drop in overdose deaths in 6 years, US preliminary data shows
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York)
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