OKLAHOMA CITY (Legal Newsline) – Appeals from the first opioid trial verdict are delayed a month after Johnson & Johnson asked for a 30-day extension.
Last week, it filed an unopposed motion to push the deadline for appeals back to Aug. 12 as it fights a nearly half-billion verdict scored by Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and the private lawyers he hired who are entitled to a significant percentage of it.
Johnson & Johnson says it has been working to get the relevant documents from the Cleveland County District Court during the coronavirus pandemic but could use a little extra time. The original deadline was set to expire this week.
Both sides appealed the decision of District Judge Thad Balkman. Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay the $465 million for causing a public nuisance. The allegations included overly aggressive selling of drugs to doctors and minimizing the danger through a campaign of distortion.
Johnson & Johnson attorneys maintained the drugs were a valuable tool to combat chronic pain and that warning of potential dangers in using the products had been adequately supplied. It also said its opioids made up a small percent of the market and that the products - a patch and a pill that could withstand a food processor - were difficult to abuse.
Plaintiff attorneys asked for $17.5 billion over a 30-year period to abate the drug problem. They contended in their appeal the $465 million figure was too low and would only provide one year of abatement.
Attorneys for Johnson & Johnson in their appeal maintained the $17.5 billion figure was wildly inflated and said the award should be reduced by $355 million to reflect pre-trial settlements made by the state with other drug-making companies. In those settlements and the J&J verdict, private lawyers, some of whom were campaign contributors to Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, stand to make more than $100 million.
AG Hunter sued Johnson & Johnson and its prescription-drug wing Janssen alleging that the companies carried out a fraudulent advertising campaign to over-supply opiates in Oklahoma for profits leading to an epidemic. Johnson & Johnson's opioid brands are Duragesic, which dispenses opioids using a timed-release patch, and a pill called Nucynta.
It was the first opioid trial brought under the "public nuisance" legal theory, attempting to hold pharmaceutical companies, distributors and pharmacies liable for the nation's addiction crisis. Critics of the nuisance claim say the state’s case is in reality a products liability case.
Two other co-defendant pharmaceutical companies, Purdue Pharma of Connecticut and Teva Pharmaceutical in Israel, earlier settled with Oklahoma. Purdue paid $270 million and $85 million was paid by Teva. That left Johnson & Johnson and Janssen as the final defendants in the case.
In the Purdue Pharma settlement, private attorneys took in $60 million. About $200 million of that went to a research project at Oklahoma State University, which is Hunter's alma mater.
Private lawyers hired by Hunter, a Republican are Whitten Burrage, Nix Patterson and Glenn Coffee & Associates. They get 25% of any award up to $100 million with that percentage falling to 15% of anything over $500 million.
Purdue officials pleaded guilty in 2007 of misleading the public about the risk of addiction from their opioid pain killer OxyContin and agreed to pay $600 million, at the time one of the largest pharmaceutical settlements in U.S. history.
State attorneys said Johnson & Johnson and Janssen should pay $17.5 billion earmarked in a proposed state abatement plan and not taxpayers because the companies caused the epidemic.
Johnson & Johnson attorneys twice during the trial asked Balkman to throw out the case and both times it was denied. The judge decided that enough evidence had been presented by the state to justify a nuisance claim.