Opioid Lawsuits

The opioid crisis began in the late 1990s. It started with Purdue Pharma’s drug OxyContin. Drug companies began telling the medical community that opioid drugs had a low risk of addiction, and health care providers began prescribing them at higher rates, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

In 2012, opioid prescriptions peaked at more than 255 million. In 2017, more than 47,000 Americans died of an opioid overdose, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That same year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared a national emergency.

While states and municipalities have filed the majority of lawsuits, some lawyers are also taking cases from individuals who suffered losses because of the opioid crisis.

States and municipalities are filing lawsuits to recover costs associated with the opioid epidemic. Individuals and their families are filing lawsuits to recover damages caused by addiction and the loss of loved ones who overdosed.

The central claim to all opioid lawsuits is that drug manufacturers and distributors improperly marketed and distributed opioids to states, cities and towns across the United States. This improper marketing and distribution led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

“From 2000 through 2011, the number of prescriptions for the Manufacturer Defendants’ opioid drugs more than quadrupled nationwide, even though there was no scientific basis for any significant increase in opioid treatment as medically necessary or appropriate,” according to a lawsuit filed by Letitia James, attorney general for the State of New York.

Government Investigations

Senator Claire McCaskill of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee conducted an investigation into opioid distributors and manufacturers and released a series of reports from 2017 to 2018.

These included Fueling an Epidemic: Exposing the Financial Ties Between Opioid Manufacturers and Third Party Advocacy Groups and Fueling an Epidemic: A Flood of 1.6 Billion Doses of Opioids into Missouri and the Need for Stronger DEA Enforcement.

Some allegations in lawsuits are based on information contained in these reports.

Fueling an Epidemic: Exposing the Financial Ties Between Opioid Manufacturers and Third Party Advocacy Groups

This report exposed the millions of dollars in payments from opioid manufacturers to 14 outside groups and physicians in these groups working on chronic pain and other opioid-related issues from 2012 to 2017.

“Initiatives from the groups in this report often echoed and amplified messages favorable to increased opioid use—and ultimately, the financial interests of opioid manufacturers,” report authors wrote.

Fueling an Epidemic: A Flood of 1.6 Billion Doses of Opioids into Missouri and the Need for Stronger DEA Enforcement

This report focused on three major drug distributors — McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Cardinal Health — failed to properly report suspicious opioid orders in Missouri. The report found evidence that companies “knew or should have known that hundreds of millions of pills were ending up on the black market.”

Investigators found three large distributors — McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Cardinal Health — shipped about 1.6 billion dosage units of opioids to the state from 2012 to 2017. This equals about 52 dosages per person in Missouri.

“These ‘big three’ distributors have also consistently failed to meet their reporting obligations over the past ten years—in some cases surrendering licenses for distribution facilities and paying escalating fines after DEA and Department of Justice investigations,” report authors wrote.

Companies being sued in opioid lawsuits include several manufacturers and distributors of opioid medications.

Opioid litigation is ongoing, and there have been settlement agreements with several states and municipalities.

In December 2017, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized 46 actions in the Southern District of Ohio under Judge Dan A. Polster in MDL number 2804. Since then, the number of lawsuits has grown.

As of December 2024, lawsuits were still pending in the MDL.

Aside from the MDL, several counties and cities have cases that remain in all 50 state courts across the country. More than 30,000 counties and cities could potentially join settlement proceedings.

Because of the size of the litigation, members of the Plaintiff’s Executive Committee (PEC) for the MDL petitioned for a new kind of class called a Negotiation Class Action in June 2019. It’s the first of its kind. All counties and cities in the MDL and out of the MDL are eligible to be a part of this class to help facilitate settlements.

The Court authorized the Negotiation Class to negotiate with 13 defendants and their affiliates in September 2019. But this class does not apply to non-county or city plaintiffs, such as Indian Tribes or individuals. The class will last until September 2024.

Drug companies and distributors have agreed to billions in settlements to the Department of Justice, states and municipalities.

One of the first settlements came in 2015 when Purdue Pharma agreed to pay the State of Kentucky $24 million. Kentucky’s lawsuits claimed that Purdue misled the public about the addictiveness of prescription opioids.

Since then, there have been billions in settlements.