An Ok­la­homa judge on Mon­day found phar­ma gi­ant J&J guilty of help­ing lay the ground­work on a na­tion­wide epi­dem­ic of opi­oid ad­dic­tion, but on­ly fined the com­pa­ny $572 mil­lion — at the very bot­tom of the range an­a­lysts had set, which stretched up in­to the bil­lions.

The close­ly watched out­come will help cal­i­brate es­ti­mates of just what kind of li­a­bil­i­ty the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny faces for an epi­dem­ic the CDC says has cost the lives of hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple through­out the coun­try.

For in­vestors, it was good news, as J&J shares spiked close to 4% on the guilty rul­ing.

Michael Ull­mann

The Ok­la­homa At­tor­ney Gen­er­al had ar­gued that J&J’s ag­gres­sive sales prac­tices cre­at­ed an over­sup­ply of opi­oids that drove the epi­dem­ic, while un­der­play­ing the dan­gers and hyp­ing the re­wards of opi­oids. J&J was the on­ly re­main­ing de­fen­dant, af­ter Te­va and Pur­due Phar­ma reached their own set­tle­ments with­out ad­mit­ting guilt.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, J&J saw it dif­fer­ent­ly, say­ing the state’s case nev­er proved their con­tention that the com­pa­ny’s ac­tions had cre­at­ed a pub­lic nui­sance. Now they’re go­ing to ap­peal.

“Janssen did not cause the opi­oid cri­sis in Ok­la­homa, and nei­ther the facts nor the law sup­port this out­come,” said Michael Ull­mann, J&J’s gen­er­al coun­sel. “We rec­og­nize the opi­oid cri­sis is a tremen­dous­ly com­plex pub­lic health is­sue and we have deep sym­pa­thy for every­one af­fect­ed. We are work­ing with part­ners to find ways to help those in need.”

This case was con­sid­ered a bell­wether suit which could have a big im­pact on the hun­dreds of state and lo­cal cas­es that are be­ing jug­gled now, pre­sent­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a mas­ter agree­ment that could reach past $100 bil­lion.

For its part, J&J ar­gued that it played — at most — a mi­nus­cule role in the epi­dem­ic in Ok­la­homa. The phar­ma gi­ant tried, with­out suc­cess, to get the case thrown out, ar­gu­ing it was pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment. 

Ok­la­homa AG Mike Hunter coun­tered by say­ing that J&J ex­ecs co­or­di­nat­ed their mar­ket­ing work on opi­oids with Pur­due for years. 

Pur­due’s own­ers, the Sack­ler fam­i­ly, came to a $270 mil­lion set­tle­ment deal with the state, which will be used to pay for a new drug re­search cen­ter.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.