Oklahoma Attorney General Dismisses Some Claims Against Opioid Makers -- Update
05 Abril 2019 - 01:25PM
Dow Jones News
By Allison Prang
The office of Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter has
dismissed claims against a host of pharmaceutical companies,
including Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Teva Pharmaceuticals USA
Inc. and Purdue Pharma, in order to focus on the public nuisance
claim it has against the opioid manufacturers.
Mr. Hunter's office said in an announcement Thursday that it
dismissed these claims "during another hearing where defendants
were tying up the court and the state's attorneys with a blizzard
of pretrial motions."
The office said that its remaining public nuisance claim
"provides the state with a comprehensive plan to address and
remediate the effects the opioid crisis continues to have" across
the state.
"The defendants in this case have tried in every way imaginable
to derail our trial date," Mr. Hunter said in prepared remarks,
adding that "moving forward with the state's public nuisance claim
moots most of the issues raised by the defendants in discovery,
allowing the parties and the judge to focus on preparing for this
trial."
The trial is still scheduled to start May 28, it said.
The office also said that dismissing the claims now doesn't
prevent it from reasserting them later. The dismissal also doesn't
change the amount of damages the state is seeking.
Last month, Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family,
agreed to pay $270 million to resolve a lawsuit filed by Oklahoma.
The majority of the settlement is expected to go toward funding a
national opioid addiction center.
Purdue and other companies face more than 1,600 lawsuits from
various cities, counties and states accusing them of helping fuel
the nation's opioid crisis through aggressive marketing of opioids.
Individual Sackler family members have been named in a few dozen of
the suits in an attempt to hold the family personally liable and
tap into their wealth.
(Jared S. Hopkins and Sara Randazzo contributed to this
article.)
Write to Allison Prang at allison.prang@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 05, 2019 12:10 ET (16:10 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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