One drugstore in Suffolk County was in the 99th percentile of opioid sales in the state from 2011 through the first quarter of 2018, the complaint said; Cardinal reported an average of 85 suspicious orders a year from the pharmacy. Still, in 2018, the drugstore continued to receive opioids from Cardinal.
The lawsuit amends an earlier suit New York State filed against Purdue Pharma, the company considered primarily responsible for unleashing the current opioid epidemic by misleading doctors about the OxyContin’s dangers and ignoring evidence that the drug was being abused.
The lawsuit adds other opioid manufacturers, including Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson; Mallinckrodt; Endo Pharmaceuticals; Teva Pharmaceuticals; Allergan; and many of their affiliated companies.
New York is one of three dozen states to sue opioid manufacturers, litigation that is separate from the bundle of 1,600 opioid-related federal cases being overseen by a United States District Court judge in Ohio, who hopes to help craft a single comprehensive settlement — an objective that may be out of reach.
With the exception of Alabama, which joined the federal consolidation, these states potentially stand to wrest swifter, bigger paydays for their constituents, as long as the states can prove their cases. This week Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers agreed to pay $270 million to settle a case in Oklahoma that was to go to trial in May.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/health/new-york-lawsuit-opioids-sacklers-distributors.html
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