Purdue Pharma LP's owners, the billionaire Sackler family, asked a Massachusetts judge to dismiss state Attorney General Maura Healey’s lawsuit which blames them for the national opioid crisis.
In her 300-page complaint, attorney Healey alleged that the family profited $4.2 billion by aggressively marketing OxyContin into the opioid addiction market. However, the Sacklers retorted saying, the attorney failed to prove that individual board members named in the lawsuit, specifically breached the law. Massachusetts is one among the three dozen states that blamed Purdue and other opioid manufacturers and distributors for misleading doctors to prescribe overdoses of opioids, magnifying its benefits and suppressing the risks. Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family recently agreed to pay $270 million to escape a state court trial involving lawsuit brought by the state of Oklahoma.
Opioid lawsuits are consolidated into a multidistrict litigation MDL No. 2804 (In Re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation) overlooked by Judge Dan Aaron Polster in the Northern District of Ohio.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stated new guidelines for monitoring opioid intake as the United States has seen significant growth in the death rate of people due to overdose of the drug. It has also highlighted new protocols for health care professionals to follow while prescribing the drugs.
