NORMAN – A Cleveland County District Judge recently ordered drug giant Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million to the state of Oklahoma because the company used deceptive marking and promotion activities, that fueled an opioid epidemic in the state.
The award was far less than the $17 billion sought by the state.
Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman – a former Republican Representative in the Oklahoma Legislature – issued the ruling Monday, Aug. 26. Balkman said Johnson & Johnson should bear some responsibility for the state’s opioid crisis.
The ruling, CBS News said, was one of the largest in US history.
“The defendants caused an opioid crisis that is evidenced by increased rates of addiction, overdose deaths and neonatal abstinence syndrome in Oklahoma,” Balkman said in a media statement. In his ruling, Balkman wrote that prescription opioid sales increase fourfold from 1994 to 2006. “More than 2,100 Oklahomans died from unintentional prescription opioid overdose,” the judge wrote. “It is an undisputed fact that in 2015, over 325 million opioid pills were dispensed to Oklahoma residents, enough for every adult to have 110 pills.”
The state, Balkman wrote, dispenses the most prescription fentanyl per capita. Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter praised the ruling, calling it a major victory for the state, nation and “everyone who has lost a loved one because of an opioid overdose.”
“Judge Balkman has affirmed our position that Johnson & Johnson maliciously and diabolically created the opioid epidemic in our state,” Hunter said in a media statement. “Our evidence convincingly showed that this company did not just lie and mislead, they colluded with other companies in route to the deadliest man-made epidemic our nation has ever seen. When deaths and sales of the drugs began to skyrocket in tandem, the company repeatedly ignored the problem and built its billion-dollar brand out of greed and on the backs of the pain and suffering of Oklahomans.”
Hunter said evidence presented at trial showed that Oklahoma doctors were targeted over 150,000 times by Johnson & Johnson sales representatives. The sales representatives aggressively marketed and bombarded doctors with “pseudoscience and misleading information” that downplayed the risks of opioids, leading to the public nuisance. As a result, when opioid sales in Oklahoma began to skyrocket, the death toll from unintentional prescription drug-related overdoses mounted, leaving behind broken homes, families, and communities.
“Finally, just as we have said at different stages of the case when Johnson & Johnson pulled out all the stops to try to derail or stall the case,” Hunter said. “We appreciate Judge Balkman’s wisdom and openness. He saw through the company’s desperate acts to delay justice for Oklahomans.”
Johnson & Johnson is expected to appeal the verdict.