The owners of Purdue Pharma LP faces New York lawsuit claiming that they triggered the U.S. opioid epidemic. The state judge denied the defendant's request to dismiss the lawsuit filed by several counties in New York.
According to the New York Government attorney, the ruling in Suffolk County is the first by any court denying a motion by the Sacklers to throw out a suit by a state or county and allowing for pretrial fact-finding to proceed against the individual defendants.
Sackler family was targeted by state and local governments for the marketing of Oxycontin painkiller, to recover the social costs of opioid addiction, such as payments for opioid prescriptions and Medicaid benefits that wouldn’t have been approved if the risks had been known.
There are 2,000 suits against opioid makers consolidated in the federal court of Ohio and other cases are pending in state courts. In March, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Sacklers over the addiction epidemic two days after Purdue agreed to pay $270 million to settle similar claims by Oklahoma.
