CLEVELAND – On Aug. 31, a lawsuit brought by several Missouri counties against more than 30 pharmaceutical companies was removed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio following the companies’ motion to remove the lawsuit, which was filed over allegations the companies are liable for the opioid epidemic sweeping the state.
A jury trial has been scheduled for Feb. 25, 2019. The defendants filed the motion to remove the lawsuit originally filed in the 22nd Judicial Court in St. Louis just one day after filing a request for an extension to reply.
On Aug. 1, Jefferson County, the city of Joplin, and Cape Girardeau, Christian, Crawford, Greene, Iron, Jasper, Stone, Taney and Washington counties filed a complaint against big pharmaceutical companies including Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals and pharmacies including Walgreens and CVS. The suit contends that the companies are guilty of "public nuisance, negligence, fraud and negligent misrepresentation."
The suit claims the companies flooded the counties with prescription opioids and contributed to the opioid epidemic that the complaint states resulted in hundreds or thousands of deaths from opioid overdose deaths in the last four years.
The complaint states that the companies evaded regulations, misrepresented the dangers of opiate pain medication for their own financial gain, putting their profits above the public health, and knowingly misled the public by falsely advertising that the opioids were safe and non-addictive.
The lawsuit also accuses the pharmaceutical companies of having their sales representatives aggressively push doctors to prescribe the drugs and claims the pharmacies never reported any suspicious opioid prescriptions to the Missouri State Pharmaceutical Board and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Missouri is currently the only state without a prescription drug monitoring program.
The suit brought by the Missouri counties comes after a slew of similar suits brought by other states recently. The counties seek to hold the companies liable for the damages and costs from the effects of opioid addiction, including medical care, addiction treatment and counseling, cost of incarceration and law enforcement involvement, and autopsies.
“Fully addressing the crisis requires that those responsible for it pay for their conduct and to abate the nuisance and harms they have created in the county,” the suit states.
The suit will be combined in the National Prescription Opiate Litigation with suits from Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky and Idaho in the Ohio court. The case has been assigned to Judge Dan A. Polster.