J&J to pay $572m in Oklahoma opioid lawsuit

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has been ordered to pay $572 million to the state of Oklahoma for its part in causing the state’s opioid epidemic.

After a seven-week trial at the Cleveland County District Court, J&J was found to be responsible of creating a public nuisance through a misleading marketing campaign of its Duragesic and Nucynta painkillers.

"The opioid crisis has ravaged the state of Oklahoma. It must be abated immediately," Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman said when announcing the verdict.

This is the first case out of thousands of opioid makers to go to trial.

During the trial, evidence was presented showing how J&J sales representatives called on medical professionals in Oklahoma hundreds of thousands of times while selling opioids over the last 20 years. Sales strategies for J&J included paying for doctors’ lunches and also using speaker programmes.

The state’s lawyers also argued that J&J used misleading sales messages in Oklahoma to promote the use of opioids. Materials such as pamphlets, coupons and internet advertising were used to mislead doctors over the safety and efficacy of opioids. Financial incentives were also given to doctors to prescribe more opioids with J&J targeting those who were already high prescribers of opioids.

J&J argued that its marketing messages were tightly regulated by the FDA and included health warnings for opioids such as addiction and death.  

The lawsuit was filed by the state’s attorney with the case now being considered a bellwether for other similar cases across the US. The fine of $572 million is significantly less than the $17 billion that the lawsuit originally sought.

The money paid by J&J will now go towards providing assessments and treatment and recovery services to any Oklahomans who require it, as well as pain management efforts.

From 2000 – 2017, 6,100 deaths were linked to prescription opioids in Oklahoma alone.

The increase in addiction and death alongside an increase in opioid sales in Oklahoma, is something ‘that was not a coincidence’, the judge stated.

J&J has said it will appeal the decision and has disputed numerous claims made during the lawsuit. In particular, the company believes the state’s interpretation of public nuisance law has been used improperly against it. In a press release, J&J remarked that public nuisance law has traditionally been applied to property disputes, not lawsuits involving the sale of goods.

“This judgment is a misapplication of public nuisance law that has already been rejected by judges in other states,” said Michael Ullmann, executive vice president, General Counsel, Jonson & Johnson. “The unprecedented award for the State’s ‘abatement plan’ has sweeping ramifications for many industries and bears no relation to the Company’s medicines or conduct.

The company also argued that the painkillers in question have accounted for less than 1% of the total opioid prescriptions in Oklahoma as well as the US.

J&J now want the fine to be put on hold until the appeal process is complete, which could last until 2021.