Judges ruled that pharmacy chains cannot be held liable for allegations they violated an Ohio public nuisance law by flooding communities with pain pills.
National pharmacy chains cannot be held liable for allegations they violated an Ohio public nuisance law by flooding communities with addictive pain pills, the state's Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
The decision marks a blow to efforts by governments to hold companies accountable for their alleged role in fueling the nation's opioid crisis. It also highlights the high-stakes risks of litigation: The same legal strategy has led to more than $50 billion in opioid settlements across the country while delivering losses in some states.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in favor of CVS, Walgreens and Walmart, which had been accused by two counties of failing to stop large numbers of pain medication orders amid a rise in addiction years ago in the Rust Belt state.
In a landmark case, a federal jury in 2021 found the pharmacies liable for helping create public nuisances in Trumbull and Lake counties, which argued that the companies supplied the communities with more pills than could have been medically necessary. Federal law requires pharmacies to determine that prescriptions have been issued for legitimate medical purposes before filling them.
U.S. District Judge Dan A. Polster ordered the chains to pay $650 million to help the communities curb the crisis. A federal appeals court asked the Ohio Supreme Court to settle whether another Ohio law governing product liability trumped the public nuisance law. The Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, ruled that it did.
The effect of the opioid epidemic "undoubtedly has far-reaching consequences for their communities and for the state as a whole," the court ruled. But "creating a solution to this crisis out of whole cloth is, however, beyond this court's authority," justices wrote.
Across the United States, state, local and tribal governments and others have filed thousands of public nuisance lawsuits, which have been consolidated in Polster's court in Cleveland. They have argued that companies' conduct allowed addictive pain medications to hit the streets, leaving public safety and health resources stretched thin.
More than 300,000 people have died in the United States from prescription opioids since 2000. As access to prescription medications tightened, many users turned to heroin and later fentanyl -- escalating overdose deaths to unprecedented levels.
Lake and Trumbull counties opted for a trial instead of settling. An attorney representing them on Tuesday called the ruling devastating and said it undermines the legal basis that has already led to nearly $1 billion in settlements in Ohio.
"This ruling is not the end of these cases, however, and our team will continue to fight for these counties through other legal avenues," Peter H. Weinberger said in a statement.
Walgreens did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, CVS said the company was pleased with the court's decision.
Walmart said the Ohio decision was the latest from a court to reject efforts to "radically expand public nuisance law to sue companies over lawful products that are already regulated." In a statement, it praised company pharmacists who help "patients in the face of a tangled web of conflicting federal and state opioid guidelines."
Tuesday's decision is not binding in other states but adds greater uncertainty for plaintiffs still pursuing opioid lawsuits.
Communities have used public nuisance laws to target companies that pollute the environment and, in recent years, have expanded that strategy, targeting the opioid industry, e-cigarette manufacturers and even energy companies alleged to have contributed to climate change.
In opioid cases, the track record at trial is mixed.
In 2021, the Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned a judge's decision in a historic trial against the drug company Johnson & Johnson, ruling that the public nuisance law doesn't apply to the manufacture, marketing and sales of prescription opioids. The same year, a California federal court also ruled for drugmakers.
The West Virginia Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal after a federal judge in that state ruled in 2022 that the nation's three major drug distributors did not cause a public nuisance by shipping millions of pain pills to one community devastated by the crisis.
But a federal court in California found Walgreens liable. A New York state jury ruled against Teva Pharmaceuticals after governments accused the Israeli drugmaker of engaging in misleading marketing practices. In November, a jury in Baltimore found the drug distributors McKesson and Cencora liable for contributing to the city's opioid crisis, awarding the city $266 million in damages.
"The Ohio Supreme Court order is just one in a series of orders going both ways. There is also a long list of plaintiff wins," said Peter J. Mougey, a Florida attorney who has helped lead plaintiff negotiations with companies.
The Ohio decision does not affect settlements that have already been struck -- money that is already being spent to help curb the state's drug crisis. Additionally, tens of millions of dollars in federal grants have been spent to saturate the state with overdose reversal medications, said Dennis Cauchon, president of Harm Reduction Ohio, which works to lessen harms of drugs. He noted that overdose deaths in Ohio, like many states, have decreased significantly in the past year.
"From a practical standpoint, more opioid money is flowing in Ohio than we can spend intelligently," Cauchon said.