"An Opioid Case Like No Other: N.Y. vs. the Entire Supply Chain", 29 Jun 2021

When New York’s sprawling opioid trial — the first in the country that targets the entire opioid supply chain — begins with opening arguments in Central Islip on Long Island on Tuesday, it will not be held in a courthouse.

There was not a courtroom large enough to fit the eight defendants, including drugmakers who manufacture opioids, distributors that supply the pills, their subsidiaries and their armies of lawyers. The judge will hear the case in an auditorium at a local college.

The trial, in which Nassau and Suffolk Counties have joined the New York State attorney general, marks the first opioid case where a jury rather than a judge will decide the outcome. Initially, the sweeping case also targeted several pharmacy chains that dispensed opioids, but in the days leading up to the trial, all were excised from the case following a flurry of settlements with New York, the details of which have not yet been finalized.

Still, the proceedings will offer rare illumination of the machinery that helped power a drug scourge that over the past two decades has killed more than 800,000 people nationwide via overdoses of prescription and street opioids, according to federal data...

Conspicuously absent from the makeshift courtroom will be the defendant most associated by the public as culpable for the two-decade-long opioid epidemic — Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, which is owned by members of the billionaire Sackler family.

Purdue was initially named in the case, as were some individual Sacklers. But nearly two years ago, as Purdue faced thousands of opioid-related lawsuits, it filed for bankruptcy, a process that has paused cases against it and the Sacklers...

The New York complaint also had named as defendants four major pharmacy chains: Walmart, CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens. But in the weeks leading up to the trial, all but Walgreens were severed from the case.

A spokesman for CVS confirmed that the pharmacy had reached a settlement agreement with Nassau and Suffolk Counties, the terms of which must be approved by the county legislatures before any financial payout is determined.

Rite Aid, Walmart and Walgreens did not respond to emails requesting comment. Lawyers for the counties declined to comment on the details of the pharmacies’ severance.

Even without the companies that have settled, a broad swath of the opioid industry is still set to take the stand, including manufacturers of generic versions of drugs, like Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and Allergan Inc., as well as massive suppliers of the pills such as Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp...

Any money recovered will not go to people harmed by the opioid crisis, but rather toward abatement — mitigating harm and preventing future crises with things like education and addiction treatment programs...