MORGANTOWN — Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Tuesday filed two more lawsuits against opioid distributors.
In June he sued Walgreens and Rite Aid in Putnam County Circuit Court. The new suits target Walmart and CVS. The allegations are similar to the previous two: Walmart and CVS, as individual distributors, supplied far more opioids to their retail pharmacies than necessary to meet a legitimate market.
The Walmart suit says, “Acting as a distributor, Walmart filled suspicious orders of prescription opioids of unusual size” and orders that deviated from the usual pattern and frequency. Walmart “failed to report or act to stop diversion that was evident to it and supplied far more opioids to its pharmacies than could have served a legitimate market for these drugs.”
The wording of the CVS case is identical. Both were among the top 10 opioid distributors during the period 2006-2016, the suits say,
The suits add that both companies’ pharmacies went even further by ordering more opioids from other distributors. The suits make no claims against the pharmacies but say retail data from the pharmacies should have been used to alert the distributors to suspicious orders.
Both companies also failed to alert West Virginia authorities or the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the suits say.
The suits allege conduct by Walmart and CVS violated the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act and caused a public nuisance. Both lawsuits seek injunctive and equitable relief.
In a release announcing the suits Morrisey said, “We must hold everyone accountable for the roles they played in the opioid epidemic and continue to push toward solutions that go after the root cause of the problem.”
Last year, Morrisey took action against the manufacturing end of the distribution chain, suing Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Endo Health Solutions and Mallinckrodt.
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