Oklahoma AG Seeks $13 billion in first opioid trial
Oklahoma lawyers want Johnson & Johnson to fund a 20-year opioid abatement program at a cost of $800 million a year up to 20 years. Can you say 'Big Tobacco'?
The first trial over the opioid crisis opened May 28, with lawyers for the state of Oklahoma asking a judge to rule that Johnson & Johnson should fund a $13 billion abatement program.
Four lawyers for the state, including Attorney General Mike Hunter, told Cleveland County District Court Judge Thad Balkman in an opening statement that Johnson & Johnson’s oversupply of the prescription painkillers led to massive addictions and deaths, according to coverage of the trial in Norman, Okla., provided by Courtroom View Network. Pursuing a single claim of public nuisance, the state is seeking monetary damages to provide treatment and other programs.
“If you oversupply, people will die,” said Brad Beckworth, a partner at Nix Patterson in Austin, Texas, in an opening statement that included several charts and graphs. “The reason we have an opioid crisis is that simple. If you oversupply, people will die.”
Michael Burrage, co-founder of Whitten Burrage in Oklahoma City, said Johnson & Johnson should pay $800 million per year for as many as 20 years—a ”bit shy of $13 billion”—to abate the crisis.
Day of reckoning?
“The day of reckoning is now here for Johnson & Johnson,” he told the judge. “You need to make Johnson & Johnson clean up this mess that they had made in Oklahoma. You are the only person that can make them do that, and it should happen at the end of this trial, in this courtroom in Norman, Oklahoma.”
Johnson & Johnson attorney Larry Ottaway of Oklahoma City’s Foliart Huff Ottaway & Bottom questioned whether the courtroom was a level playing field and insisted that many of the assertions made by the state’s lawyers simply weren’t true.
“John Adams said in a famous closing argument that facts are stubborn things,” he said. “And indeed they are.”
He was scheduled to continue his opening statement after a lunch break.
The trial, in Norman, Oklahoma, wraps up in two months. Lawyers suing opioid manufacturers and distributors, in both state and federal courts across the country, are closely watching the trial and its outcome. A larger case is set for trial Oct. 21 that would be the first in the multidistrict litigation before U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, in Cleveland, which involves more than 1,600 cases, primarily brought by cities and counties, over the opioid crisis.
The Oklahoma case initially named Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals, along with Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals. Purdue settled out of the case in March for $270 million. On Sunday, Teva agreed to pay $85 million, leaving Johnson & Johnson as the sole defendant.
Aggressive marketing techniques
On Tuesday, lawyers for the state of Oklahoma argued that Johnson & Johnson’s aggressive marketing of its opioids led doctors and hospital staff, and others, to believe the painkillers were not addictive and could be appropriate for pain treatment in the long term.
“The evidence will show they were trying to get people to stay on their drugs longer,” Beckworth said. “Is that something we should do, is have people stay in drugs that are addictive?”
He said there was no crisis when opioids first arrived on the market, but, after 1996, Johnson & Johnson’s sales representatives took doctors out to dinner, as part of a more aggressive marketing campaign, to convince them to use their opioids in an effort to boost sales.
Also, despite a corporate policy of being responsible for its communities, Johnson & Johnson did not participate in the various task forces that the state set up to deal with the opioid crisis.
“J&J left, and we ended up holding the bag,” Beckworth said.
And the costs of cleaning up are in the billions, said Reggie Whitten, another co-founder of Whitten Burrage, for the state of Oklahoma.
“They changed the way this country viewed opioids,” he said. “It’s really, really difficult to fix it.”
Read more:
House Committee on Education & the Workforce discusses opioids and federal employees
3 proactive ways to address the opioid crisis in the workplace