For the families of the roughly 400,000 Americans who have died of opioid drug overdoses since 1999, a legal drama scheduled to unfold in an Ohio courtroom next month may feel like a true shot at justice.
After downplaying the risks of dangerous and highly addictive prescription narcotics, and of profiting from their spiraling misuse, the purveyors of prescription painkillers could be forced to reckon with the consequences of their actions.
The civil trial promises to expose evidence suggesting that dozens of companies made deceptive claims about opioids, flooded the market with their products, engaged in shady record-keeping and lucrative self-dealing, and looked the other way as the body count mounted.
For their role in seeding and supplying an epidemic of addiction, a jury could hold the companies liable for billions of dollars in damages.
Equally important, a trial in the case known as Multidistrict Litigation 2804 would explore some of the thorniest questions in America today: Who bears responsibility for addiction? Can businesses be blamed if government agencies fail to enforce the law? And when profits drive the companies that deliver American healthcare, where does that leave patients?
Questions like these "require a broad conversation," said Thomas Cooke, a professor of business law at Georgetown University. But the companies in the Ohio case "would rather this go away. They'd rather not have that conversation."
Nor does U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster, who presides over MDL 2804, think a Cleveland courtroom is the place to resolve such conundrums. Polster has leaned hard on all sides to settle the case and avert a trial.
Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family that controls it could pave the way. The MDL suits accuse them of engaging in a deceptive campaign to market OxyContin, and earlier this month they announced a deal to have the Sacklers pay $3 billion and steer all of Purdue's future profits to states, counties, cities and federal territories that sign on to the settlement. Purdue says the payout could be worth more than $10 billion over time. Neither the Sacklers nor Purdue would acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Whether deals like this deliver justice will be in the eye of the beholder. But they could bring swift resolution to a case that otherwise threatens to grind on for years. With opioids claiming 130 lives a day in the United States, those who favor a settlement argue that time and money are better spent fighting the epidemic than debating who's to blame for it.
