Oxycontin marketing suit is Purdue Pharma's 'legal nightmare'
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A civil lawsuit filed by the state of Kentucky against the maker of Oxycontin could tarnish the company’s mostly successful legal track record in cases alleging abuse of the painkiller.
Purdue Pharma has won dismissals of more than 400 personal-injury lawsuits involving the drug and defeated more than 10 would-be class actions, Bloomberg News reports. But the company suffered a setback in Kentucky’s suit when a judge ruled in April 2013 that the company had missed a deadline to respond to the state’s requests for admission, and the entire list would be treated as admissions.
An appeals court ruled against Purdue Pharma on the issue, which had argued the requests for admission should have been served again after the case was removed to federal court, then returned to state court.
“The lawsuit, once dismissed as a quixotic mission, has become Purdue’s legal nightmare,” Bloomberg News says, “one that the company says could result in a catastrophic $1 billion judgment against it, based on the state’s allegations as well as the potential for punitive damages and pre- and post-judgment interest. With other lawsuits filed this year in Illinois and California against Purdue and other opioid makers, the Kentucky case could trigger more litigation along the lines of the suits that cost Big Tobacco billions in the 1990s.”
The Louisville-Courier Journal had a 2012 story on the suit, which alleged that Purdue Pharma helped create Oxycontin addiction through aggressive and deceptive marketing, costing Kentucky taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in social and health costs.
Kentucky had filed suit after refusing its share of a fine paid by Purdue Pharma in 2007 when three of its executives pleaded guilty to misbranding Oxycontin as less addictive than other narcotics.
The company says it accepted full responsibility for the actions of some colleagues that ended in 2001. It says it combats prescription drug abuse and formulates Oxycontin with “abuse-deterrent properties.”
Hat tip to @NateRaymond.
