Walmart, CVS face billions in claims fueling opioid epidemic

Two counties in Ohio will be among the first to try companies in federal court over lawsuits filed by communities across the country. They say that pharmacies caused a public outcry by failing to properly monitor prescriptions and patient drug use habits, causing communities to spend taxpayer money dealing with addiction and fatal overdoses. was forced. Similar lawsuits are pending against drug manufacturers and distributors.

Ohio is one of the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis, which has killed nearly 500,000 Americans over two decades. Trumbull and Lake Counties allege they had a flood of 140 million pills from 2006 to 2012 because pharmacies turned a blind eye to questionable prescriptions and didn’t make the necessary good-faith efforts to determine whether they were legitimate. .

“For many years, pharmacists were pulled in two directions,” said Elizabeth Chiarello, a St. Louis University sociologist who has studied the industry’s response to the opioid crisis. “They’re required by law to fill out valid prescriptions, but chains want them to do it as fast and efficiently as possible,” meaning that many didn’t do much to weed out so-called “pill-mill scripts.” .

The Cleveland case is the first jury trial of more than 4,000 opioid lawsuits consolidated before U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who has been overseeing the trial since 2018 and encouraged a national resolution for all claims. While there have been some local deals recently, pollster is criticizing pharmacy owners for failing to make better progress on a wider settlement.

A global deal could cost pharmacies $10 billion to $15 billion, according to Holly Fromm, a litigation analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, but they are likely to go ahead with early trials to claim that the companies are under pressure from their insurers. to cover any liability. .

Who Pays?

“Even if there is a judgment, conduct that serves as the basis for liability may be considered negligent, such that insurance must indemnify them.”

Holly Fromm, BI analyst. Click here to view the report.

In August, after reaching a settlement with Trumbull and Lake Counties, Right Aid Corp was dropped as a defendant in the Cleveland lawsuit, court records show. Details were not disclosed, but people familiar with the deal said the company has agreed to pay more than $3 million and that the payment is contingent on winning a coverage dispute with its insurers over Rite Aid.

In July, Rite Aid, Walmart, CVS and Walgreens settled cases brought by two of New York’s counties after the start of a state court trial, the filings show. Suffolk County said the companies would pay it $13 million combined. Nassau County did not disclose how much it would receive. Before the trial began, drugmaker Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $263 million to settle claims against it.

‘The Power of Arguments’

Alexandra Lahav, a law professor at the University of Connecticut who follows the opioid trial, said she was surprised the Cleveland case hasn’t been settled before the trial. The remaining pharmacy defendants must “believe in the strength of their legal arguments,” she said. Walmart and other pharmacy operators say counties cannot prove that prescriptions written by licensed doctors to manage patient pain caused a public nuisance, which is “public health, public safety, public peace, or undue interference with public comfort”, the court filings show. Lawyers for Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens said in the court filing, “It would be completely unfair for pharmacists to refuse to fill valid prescriptions written by legitimate doctors because they disagree with the prescriber’s medical decision.” The root of the opioid crisis, Walgreens said, is not the use of prescription drugs in the two Ohio counties, but “driven largely by the widespread availability of heroin, illicit fentanyl and other illicit drugs smuggled by criminal drug gangs.” Is.” Walmart argues that it “does not belong” to the Ohio case because it accounts for slightly more than 3% of locally distributed opioids for five pharmacies in the counties, according to court filings. The company also said it has a robust monitoring system in place for controlled substances such as opioids.

distribution of drugs

“Walmart only hired certified, trained and licensed pharmacists,” the company’s lawyers said in the court filing. “Walmart provided a number of resources to further assist those pharmacists with the distribution of controlled substances.”

Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove declined to comment on the upcoming test. Right Aid spokesman Christopher Savaris did not respond to requests for comment.

CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis said in an emailed statement, “Our pharmacies fill legitimate prescriptions written by licensed doctors. The chain complied with the law, he said. “We never manufactured or marketed opioids. , and never sold opioids to pain clinics. Internet pharmacies or pill mills fuel the opioid crisis,” Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso said.

In his open statement to the jury on Monday, Walgreen’s attorney Kaspar Stoffelmeier said the chain had policies in place for decades aimed at helping their pharmacists weed out inappropriate opioid prescriptions. “Pharmacists’ job is to make sure people get their medicines,” Stoffelmeier said. . “But our policies tell them whether a prescription is valid or not and we will support them in every way possible.”

But Ohio counties claim that pharmacies ignored obvious red flags about opioid prescriptions — which involve out-of-state patients traveling hundreds of miles to get painkillers — and pumped profits out of the state. and violated federal laws.

“I’m not pointing a finger at pharmacists,” Ohio counties attorney Mark Lanier said in opening statements Monday. “I’m pointing to the back of big businesses” policies that allowed unfair opioid distribution, she said.

Evidence will be presented that shows pharmacy providers did not have robust systems in place to identify suspected opioid prescriptions until the pandemic was far from over, Lanier said. Lawyers for other pharmacy providers will make their opening statements Tuesday.

The consolidated case before Pollster is at the National Prescription Opioid Litigation, 17-MD-2804, US District Court, Northern District of Ohio (Cleveland).

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.