MORGANTOWN — State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced Thursday that the state Mass Litigation Panel has granted his motion to expedite the trial of the state’s cases against several drug manufacturers.
Three lawsuits — one against Teva Pharmaceuticals and one against Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals, both filed in August 2019, and one against Endo Health Solutions, filed in November 2019 — will be considered together. The trial is set to begin April 4, 2022.
The Mass Litigation Panel also denied the defendants’ motion to delay the cases any further.
“This is a big win for the state and a huge step toward gaining justice for all those impacted by the opioid crisis,” Morrisey said in his announcement. “The defendants’ alleged actions have caused widespread harm to our state and its citizens. They must be held accountable.”
All three suits were filed in Boone County Circuit Court; they will be heard by the Mass Litigation Panel in Kanawha County.
The Dominion Post has previously reported on the cases and Morrisey summarized them in his announcement. He alleges the defendants mischaracterized and failed to disclose the serious risk of addiction, overstated the benefits of chronic opioid therapy and promoted higher dosage amounts without disclosing inherently greater risks, and concealed their misconduct.
The case against Johnson & Johnson and Janssen alleges they persuaded concerned doctors that the opioids they had been unwilling to prescribe were more effective and safe enough for wide and long-term use, even for treatment of relatively minor pain conditions.
Teva allegedly had its sales representatives market the fentanyl-based opioid Actiq to non-oncologists and pain clinic doctors, even though the representatives knew the drug was for cancer patients.
In the Endo case, Morrisey alleges the company rebranded its widely abused drug Numorphan from the 1960s to keep up with competition decades later. The effort included a new name, Opana, and a new color to minimize memory of Numorphan’s reputation for abuse and diversion. Endo also allegedly misrepresented a later version of Opana ER as tamper resistant.
The Dominion Post previously reported that Morrisey elected to file the suits in state court rather than join the National Prescription Opiate Litigation in Ohio federal court in order to pursue better settlements. The suits allege that the manufacturers’ conduct violated the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act and caused a public nuisance.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp
EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
