ST. LOUIS – Ten Missouri counties, including Jefferson, and the city of Joplin are suing pharmacies, distributors, manufacturers and so-called "pill mills" for the costs of fighting the opioid epidemic.
As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the lawsuit filed at St. Louis Circuit Court "by lawyers from across the state, including the Clayton law firm Carey Danis & Lowe, says that the pain drugs have been misbranded and that manufacturers and distributors conspired to expand sales of the drug by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to convince the public and medical professionals that they should be used for long-term, chronic pain."
In addition to Jefferson and to the city of Joplin, the other counties serving as plaintiffs are Cape Girardeau, Christian, Crawford, Greene, Iron, Jasper, Stone, Taney and Washington, which "paid for the opioid problem in additional costs for autopsies, law enforcement, incarceration, medical care, treatment, counseling and family protective services," the report said, citing the suit.
The lawsuit accuses 49 defendants, which include pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Teva Pharmaceutical, and pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS, for the charges of "public nuisance, negligence, fraud and negligent misrepresentation," the Post-Dispatch report said.
The suit is similar to others filed by state and local officials in recent years, also against pharmaceutical companies and others involved in the opioid crisis.
Lawyers involved in the lawsuit defend a compensation for all the costs regarding the epidemic would be the best solution for the case.
"The counties get reimbursed for the past cost of the last ten years, and they are fully funded for their future cost in solving and tackling this problem," attorney Jack Garvey of Carey Danis and Lowe said. He was one of the counsels who filed the suit.
Garvey also highlights the case is significant to the counties, since "county governments are in the frontline of the opioids war," employing their resources and "taxpayer money to solve this problem."
As an outcome of the lawsuit, Garvey hopes that pharmaceutical industry "follows state and federal guidelines on reporting suspicious orders, " as well as to "honestly and truthfully deal with prescribing doctors, and the patients can tell them of the dangers of this drug," and to provide "alternatives to the chronic pain" in the medicine market.