Cardinal Health Inc, McKesson Corp, and JM Smith Corp won a trial in Georgia against families of opioid addicts who accused the firms of functioning as drug traffickers.
After two days of deliberation, a jury in Glynn County Superior Court handed down the judgment, which was broadcast live on the court's website. It was the first trial in which opioid claims were made by individuals rather than government agencies.
We are happy with the jury's verdict, which underscores that a statute intended to apply to illicit drug street traffickers cannot be utilized in a misguided attack on distributors of federally regulated pharmaceuticals, Cardinal said in a statement.
According to McKesson, the judgment was the correct conclusion based on the law and facts. The plaintiffs' counsel did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Children whose parents died of overdoses are among the 21 plaintiffs, as is a lady whose grandson was born with opioid addiction signs and died at one-month-old, and a woman who was raped as a teenager but received no treatment from her opioid-addicted mother.
The plaintiffs claimed that the distributors fostered illegal opioid usage by filling bogus pharmacy orders and failed to report suspicious opioid transactions to law enforcement as required by the federal Controlled Substances Act.
More than $3,300 in state, municipal, and tribal governments have filed lawsuits against opioid makers, distributors, and pharmacies, resulting in settlements totaling more than $50 billion.
Unlike those cases, which accused firms of causing a public nuisance by failing to stop the flow of illicit opioids, the Georgia plaintiffs filed their claims under the state's Drug Dealer Liability Act, which permits persons who have been damaged by illegal drug usage to sue dealers.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overdoses killed more than 500,000 individuals in the United States between 1999 and 2020. According to the CDC, opioid overdoses increased by 38% in 2020 over the previous year and another 15% in 2021 during the COVID-19 epidemic.
