SEATTLE (Legal Newsline) - State of Washington officials led by Attorney General Bob Ferguson are pressing their case against prescription opioid drug distributors McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Corp., saying the companies irresponsibly promoted drugs for profits.
The trial which began on Nov. 15 in the King County Superior Court accuses the defendants, three of the biggest distributors of opioids in the U.S., of causing an overdose crisis in Washington State that has claimed numerous lives.
Judge Michael Scott is hearing the case without a jury.
The distributors take the pills from the manufacturers and supply them to hospitals, doctor’s offices and pharmacies.
During Thursday’s session, Joe Rannazzisi, former head of the Office of Diversion Control for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), testified. Having been for making sure doctors and pharmacies observe regulations including those under the federal Controlled Substances Act, he described a prescription drug industry through 2015 as “out of control.”
“Drugs were going out into the community and were getting into the wrong hands, without supervision,” Rannazzisi said in a taped interview conducted by plaintiff attorney W. Mark Lanier. “We were losing people left and right during 14 and 15 (2015, 16,000 deaths annually nationwide). People die. Diversion (illegal use of drugs) causes death.”
As previously reported, while Rannazzisi ran the DEA’s Diversion Control Division until shortly before he retired in 2015, he oversaw a massive increase in the quotas that set how many opioid pills manufacturers can sell. He came to national fame in 2018 after appearing on “60 Minutes” criticizing federal opioid policy as too lax. He has since become a $500-an-hour expert for private lawyers representing state and local governments suing the opioid industry.
Rannazzisi also was the star witness for lawyers, led by Lanier, representing two Ohio counties that are suing Walgreens, CVS and other pharmacy chains. Closing arguments were held earlier this week in that case that will be decided by a jury.
According to the Washington State Department of Health, 1,200 people died of opioid overdose in the state in 2020.
In the taped interview, Lanier asked Rannazzisi if he had done anything wrong.
“Absolutely not,” Rannazzisi responded.
Rannazzisi denied that he had been at all responsible for the drug crisis in Washington State.
He indicated he could not have arbitrarily cut quotas of drug supplies and that such a cut if made would have deprived patients of their pain medications, for example end-of-life patients in hospice care.
Rannazzisi said he disagreed with a taped statement from former DEA Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg saying the agency had been too “opaque” and needed to issue more guidance.
The state is asking for damages of $32.8 billion initially to fund treatment and related programs, but with more coming from penalties and surrendered profits the total could reach $95 billion.
Attorneys for the companies deny the allegations in the lawsuit saying they are the unfair targets of wrongful litigation that is asking for wildly inflated damages. Defense attorneys argued that responsibility for the drug crisis rests with the DEA, which they said failed to act on submitted reports warning about opioid drug orders that were considered suspicious (unusual size of an order or frequency).
Enu Mainigi, Cardinal Health attorney with the law firm of Williams & Connolly in Washington D.C. earlier in the case said the rise of opioid prescriptions was not a result of corporate wrongdoing. Instead she said the increase beginning in the 1990s came when medical doctors increasingly recommended the drugs as a way to lessen suffering from chronic pain.
According to a Reuters report the state earlier rejected a proposal for a settlement in which Washington State would receive $527.5 million as part of a national $26 billion payout, $21 billion coming from the three distributors and $5 billion from Johnson & Johnson.
Ferguson, a Democrat, said the amount offered in the proposed deal would not come close to cover the damage caused by the opioid crisis. Washington is one of eight states in the country that chose not to participate in a national settlement, and filed a lawsuit against the companies.
The trial comes on the heels of two earlier trials in which the courts decided in favor of the drug companies. On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned a $465 million lower court judgement against Johnson & Johnson. In another case in Orange County, California, a judge decided in favor of drug companies including Johnson & Johnson, deciding that the companies had not used deceptive business practices to increase unnecessary opioid prescriptions.
Court adjourned for the Thanksgiving holiday and will resume on Nov. 29. The trial is expected to last for three weeks past Christmas.