Big Pharma Ordered to Face Cities’ Opioid Claims
- Municipalities claim companies worked together to push sales
- Ruling paves way for first federal trial over opioid epidemic
Oxycodone pain pills
Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images
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Johnson & Johnson, Cardinal Health Inc. and other makers and distributors of opioid painkillers must face lawsuits claiming they banded together to wrongfully push sales of the addictive pills, a judge ruled as the first federal trial over the medicines looms next month.
U.S. District Judge Dan Polster ruled Tuesday that juries must decide whether to hold companies like pharmacy chain Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. liable for undertaking “coordinated efforts” to commit “unlawful acts” in the marketing, delivering and selling of opioids.