Oklahoma Supreme Court reverses court decision to have Johnson & Johnson pay $465M to state for its role in opioid crisis
Within the justices’ resolution filed Tuesday, they wrote that the district court docket “erred” by holding Johnson & Johnson liable underneath the state’s public nuisance statute for its opioid prescription advertising and marketing marketing campaign.
“We maintain that the district court docket’s growth of public nuisance regulation went too far. Oklahoma public nuisance regulation doesn’t lengthen to the manufacturing, advertising and marketing, and promoting of prescription opioids,” Oklahoma Supreme Court docket Justice James Winchester wrote in his opinion.
The opinion states that the manufacture and distribution of merchandise “not often causes a violation of a public proper” and {that a} producer typically doesn’t have management over a product as soon as its offered, and that if the general public nuisance regulation had been allowed for use to carry an organization answerable for its merchandise “a producer might be held perpetually liable.”
“In reaching this resolution, we don’t reduce the severity of the hurt that 1000’s of Oklahoma residents have suffered due to opioids,” the opinion states. “Nevertheless grave the issue of opioid habit is in Oklahoma, public nuisance regulation doesn’t present a treatment for this hurt.”
In an announcement to CNN, Johnson & Johnson referred to as its actions referring to the advertising and marketing and promotion of the prescription ache medicines “applicable and accountable.”
“We acknowledge the opioid disaster is a tremendously advanced public well being situation, and we have now deep sympathy for everybody affected,” the assertion mentioned. “Immediately the Oklahoma State Supreme Court docket appropriately and categorically rejected the misguided and unprecedented growth of the general public nuisance regulation as a method to manage the manufacture, advertising and marketing, and sale of merchandise, together with the Firm’s prescription opioid medicines.”
Oklahoma Legal professional Basic John O’Connor mentioned he was “upset” by the state supreme court docket’s resolution.
“The Judgment holding Johnson & Johnson accountable for his or her misleading actions was an enormous victory for Oklahoma residents and their households who’ve been ravaged by opioids,” O’Connor mentioned in an announcement to CNN. “Our employees shall be exploring choices. We’re nonetheless pursuing our different pending claims in opposition to opioid distributors who’ve flooded our communities with these extremely addictive medicine for many years. Oklahomans deserve nothing much less.”
One state supreme court docket decide wrote in a dissenting opinion that the district court docket’s resolution needs to be reversed and the matter despatched again to the court docket for a “right” willpower of damages.
Editor’s observe: An earlier model of this story incorrectly said the sum of the penalty.
