Ohio Judge Rules Walmart, CVS, And Walgreens Must Pay a Total Of $650.6 Million In Damages Caused By The Opioid Crisis

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens must pay $650.6 million to two Ohio counties for damage caused by the opioid crisis.
US District Judge Dan Aaron Polster said that over the next 15 years, Lake County must get about $306.2 million and Trumbull County must get about $344.4 million.
Last November, it was decided that all three companies were to blame for the opioid epidemic in both Lake and Trumbull counties. In May, Polster led separate hearings to figure out how much money should be given.

The lawsuit was first filed in 2018. It was part of the federal multi-district litigation that was set up in 2018 to handle the many claims against opioid manufacturers and distributors.

The complaint says that the counties said the pharmacies “abused their position of special trust and responsibility” as registered dispensers of controlled drugs and “fed a black market for prescription opioids” as a result.
In his ruling, Polster said that the damages were meant to “address a small part of a terrible, stubborn, and getting worse national tragedy.”
“Even if the Court could wave a magic wand and remove forever any existing or future oversupply of legal prescription opioids and stop all future diversion of legal prescription opioids into the illegal market, this magic would do nothing to reduce the nuisance that would still exist in Lake and Trumbull Counties, which is the high rate of OUD [opioid use disorder] and opioid addiction,” Polster wrote.

Walmart (WMT), CVS (CVS), and Walgreens all said through their spokespeople that they plan to appeal the decision.
Fraser Engerman, senior director of external relations for Walgreens, said in a statement, “The facts and the law did not support the jury’s verdict last fall, and they do not support the court’s decision now.” “We’ve said all along that we never made or sold opioids or gave them to the “pill mills” and online pharmacies that caused this crisis,” the company said.
Walmart said in a statement that the plaintiffs in the case “sued Walmart to get money” and that the trial “was set up to help the plaintiffs’ lawyers and was full of amazing legal and factual mistakes.”
“Instead of addressing the real causes of the opioid crisis, like pill mill doctors, illegal drugs, and sleepy regulators, plaintiffs’ lawyers wrongly claimed that pharmacists must second-guess doctors in a way that the law never intended and that many federal and state health regulators say interferes with the doctor-patient relationship,” the statement says.
A person from CVS said that Polster’s decision is “wrong” because it doesn’t follow the law.
“We strongly disagree with the Court’s decision about the counties’ plan to cut down on pollution, as well as the main verdict from last fall. Pharmacists fill legal prescriptions written by doctors who are licensed by the DEA and who write prescriptions for legal, FDA-approved drugs to treat real people who are sick “Executive Director of Corporate Communications at CVS Health Mike DeAngelis said.
Local leaders in Trumbull and Lake Counties, on the other hand, praised the decision and said that the money will be used to fight the opioid problem.
Trumbull County Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa were reported in a recent interview saying, that the county hopes Wednesday’s decision “will mark the start of the long road to recovery for the people of Trumbull County.”
“Trumbull County’s frontline workers have been working hard for years to fix the problems caused by the opioid crisis. Because of their experience and our work in this lawsuit, we know which mitigation strategies work to keep our community from getting worse. The news we got today means that we will soon have the long-awaited money we need to help people who have been hurt by this terrible epidemic,” Cantalamessa said.
John Plecnik, the commissioner of Lake County, said that his county will use the $306.2 million it was given to help communities deal with the effects of the opioid crisis.

“I’m glad that the Court has decided that the opioid crisis is a public health emergency. This decision holds Big Pharma responsible for the great harm and lives lost because of the overselling of opioids,” Plecnik said. “We hope the legal precedent that Lake and Trumbull Counties have won together will set the stage for the rest of the country and help end the opioid epidemic.”