{"id":7956,"date":"2019-08-30T12:26:30","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/?p=7956"},"modified":"2020-04-20T10:44:41","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T14:44:41","slug":"oklahoma-tackles-the-opioid-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/oklahoma-tackles-the-opioid-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma Tackles the Opioid Epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_8232\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8232\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/medication.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8232\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/medication-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/medication-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/medication-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/medication-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/medication-450x300.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8232\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alarming epidemic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Since 1999, over 700,000 people in the United States have died from drug overdoses.\u00a0 In response to this seemingly uncontrollable epidemic, the state of Oklahoma is stepping up as one of the first states to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable.\u00a0Earlier this week, a judge ruled that Johnson &amp; Johnson must pay $572 million for their role in the overdose death count.\u00a0 In 2017 alone, 68% of the 70,000 US overdoses were at the hands of an opioid.\u00a0 This landmark case cites Oklahoma\u2019s public nuisance law and the argument that Johnson &amp; Johnson put people in harm by engaging in \u201cfalse and misleading marketing of both their drugs and opioids.\u201d\u00a0The state of Oklahoma blames Johnson &amp; Johnson for the influx of opioids in the state.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Johnson &amp; Johnson was disappointed with the ruling of the case, and the company maintains its innocence against all claims.\u00a0A company representative commented that while the amount of overdoses in the country is alarming, placing blame on Johnson &amp; Johnson for violating the public nuisance law is a stretch.\u00a0 The company argues that the state pieced together marketing material from the last 30 years to fabricate their public nuisance claim.\u00a0 Johnson &amp; Johnson also fails to see that a factual argument was presented to show how the company, and its subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, contributed to the crisis.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the first punch the state of Oklahoma has delivered to drug makers.\u00a0 The state gained previous victories against Purdue Pharma for $270 million and against Teva Pharmaceuticals for $85 million.\u00a0 While the prior cases ended in settlements, this most recent court battle resulted in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www-m.cnn.com\/2019\/08\/26\/health\/oklahoma-opioid-trial-verdict-bn\/index.html?r=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2F\">verdict<\/a> from a judge in trial.\u00a0 Oklahoma is now known as the first state to go up against a drug maker in trial, and win.\u00a0It is the hope that this case will encourage other states to also take a stand against pharmaceutical companies.\u00a0A federal case filed on behalf of 2,000 cities and communities, against drug makers, is set to go to trial this fall to tackle similar opioid epidemic issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since 1999, over 700,000 people in the United States have died from drug overdoses.\u00a0 In response to this seemingly uncontrollable epidemic, the state of Oklahoma is stepping up as one&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[548],"tags":[2669,1047,2627,2562,30],"class_list":["post-7956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lawsuits","tag-epidemic","tag-oklahoma","tag-pharmaceutical-product","tag-verdict","tag-wrongful-death-2"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7956"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8233,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7956\/revisions\/8233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lawyer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}