The deal, which is a combination of cash payouts and donations of addiction treatments, could become a model for a nationwide settlement of thousands of similar cases brought in an attempt to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable for an epidemic of addiction that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Judge Dan A. Polster of the Northern District of Ohio announced from the bench Monday morning that the deal was struck around 1 a.m.
In the settlement, the drug distributors — McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, which distribute about 90% of all the medicines to pharmacies, hospitals and clinics in the United States — agreed to pay $215 million to the two Ohio counties that brought the lawsuit. Teva, the Israel-based manufacturer of generic drugs, agreed to pay $20 million in cash over three years and donate $25 million worth of addiction treatment drugs such as a generic Suboxone, which blunts cravings for opioids.
“We hope it provides a bench mark for a national resolution for other communities to have the resources to do what is necessary to abate the epidemic,” said Peter H. Weinberger, a Cleveland lawyer who represents some Ohio counties.
Even as the two-county settlement was being announced, the drug distributors and other corporate defendants in the trial were pursuing a global deal, worth $48 billion in cash and donated addiction treatments, to resolve all opioid lawsuits against them.
On Monday afternoon, four state attorneys general — from North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Tennessee — announced a step toward that much more ambitious goal, saying they had reached a tentative agreement to settle the cases against the three distributors, Teva, and Johnson & Johnson. But they not only have to sell the deal to the rest of the states, but also to the cities and counties, who have been pushing for more money paid out in a shorter time frame.
This article originally appeared in
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