West Virginia judge rules in favor of drug distributors in opioid suit
Three major drug distributors are off the hook for what may have been a $2.5 billion payment after a federal judge found them not liable for the opioid epidemic in parts of West Virginia, one of the hardest-hit areas of the country.
Despite distributing more than 51.3 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone to pharmacies in Cabell County and the city of Huntington over less than a decade, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health didn’t cause an oversupply of opioids in the area, Judge David Faber ruled on Monday.
“Doctors, 99% of whom were acting in good faith, determined the total volume of prescription opioids that pharmacies ordered from defendants and dispensed pursuant to those prescriptions,” Faber wrote in his opinion.
The ruling follows a months-long trial, in which prosecutors argued that the defendants created an opioid epidemic in Cabell County and Huntington through their wholesale distribution of prescription opioids. The county and city were hit hard by the epidemic, with opioids accounting for more than 80% of overdose deaths in Cabell County from 2001 to 2018.
In 2017, more than 10% of people in Huntington, Cabell County and Wayne County were addicted to opioids or had been in the past, according to court documents.
The state of West Virginia tracked more than 6,000 overdose deaths from 2001 to 2015, the documents state. Former Bureau for Public Health commissioner Rahul Gupta once called the state “ground zero” for the national opioid epidemic.
“The opioid crisis has taken a considerable toll on the citizens of Cabell County and the City of Huntington,” Faber wrote on Monday. “And while there is a natural tendency to assign blame in such cases, they must be decided not based on sympathy, but on the facts and the Law.”
Faber added that “there is nothing unreasonable about distributing controlled substances to fulfill legally written prescriptions.”
Meanwhile, Huntington Mayor Steve Williams said in an emailed statement that his “disappointment cannot be measured.”
In their complaint, prosecutors accused the distributors of selling enough opioids in West Virginia between 2006 and 2014 to account for “611 pain pills for every man, woman and child in the state.”
Plaintiffs accused the distributors — as well as manufacturers, pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers — of engineering “a dramatic shift in how and when opioids are prescribed” and failing to maintain effective controls.
“This case was always about holding these distributors accountable and providing our doctors, nurses, counselors, first responders and social workers with some of the resources needed to combat the opioid crisis,” Williams said in the statement. “We will work alongside our counsel to ensure the fight continues on behalf of so many who lost their lives and livelihoods to the opioid epidemic.”
The city and county sought $2.5 billion from McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health to address the crisis, according to a Reuters report. The state of West Virginia opted out of a $26 billion settlement with the distributors last year.
The state has since reached settlements with a suite of companies for their role in the opioid epidemic, including J&J, which agreed to pay $99 million earlier this year to clear up claims against it. Teva and Allergan also struck a settlement with West Virginia back in April, worth $161.5 million.
