A new court decision has changed the way the settlements for the opioid epidemic may play out in courtrooms. A high-level court in Ohio recently ruled that public nuisance laws cannot be applied against pharmacies doing legitimate business, even if they have an outsize amount of traffic due to opioid prescriptions unless they follow a specific law at the state level called the Ohio Product Liability Act (OPLA). This means that Ohio counties can’t sue companies like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart for causing a public nuisance, a lawsuit they tried to bring earlier this year. 

Why These Nuisance Lawsuits Matter

Many companies involved in the opioid epidemic at one level or another have been involved in lawsuits, including pharmacies.  Lake and Trumbull counties recently sued CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart, saying they caused a public nuisance by allowing too many opioids to be sold. A federal jury agreed, but the pharmacies appealed. They argued that the counties must follow the OPLA rules for these claims.

The federal court asked the Ohio Supreme Court to explain whether the counties could file these lawsuits outside the OPLA.

Patients, Addiction and Pharmacies

Patients often exploited the system to obtain multiple prescriptions for opioids, which they would then fill at different pharmacies. Several factors enabled this: Many states lacked prescription drug monitoring programs at the time. These electronic databases track controlled substance prescriptions. Without this oversight, pharmacies could not easily see if a patient had filled the same prescription elsewhere. And for whatever reason, they were slow to implement these systems when they realized there was a problem. 

Patients could also visit multiple doctors complaining of pain, and receive identical prescriptions from each. Since physicians operated independently, there was no coordination or sharing of patient records to identify this behavior.

Pharmacies usually operated without real-time communication or central databases, making it easy for patients to fill duplicate prescriptions without being flagged.

Regulators say that the number of prescriptions being filled at pharmacies should have been a red flag to contact the DEA or other enforcement agency rather than continuing to fill shady prescriptions.

Prior Lawsuits Against Pharmacies and Outcomes

The Courts have agreed for the most part that pharmacies played a large role in the chaos of the opioid epidemic. Pharmacies like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart have faced several lawsuits related to opioids in recent years and have mostly settled out of court with states and counties. Here are some recent outcomes against pharmacies:

  • 2022 Settlement: CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart agreed to pay over $13 billion to settle opioid-related lawsuits brought by states, cities, and counties across the U.S. The lawsuits claimed these companies failed to monitor and stop suspicious opioid prescriptions.
  • Florida Case: Walgreens settled with the state of Florida for $683 million in 2022 to resolve claims that it contributed to the opioid epidemic.
  • San Francisco Ruling: In 2022, a federal judge ruled that Walgreens contributed to San Francisco’s opioid crisis by failing to investigate suspicious prescriptions properly.

These lawsuits argue that pharmacies played a key role in the opioid epidemic by not doing enough to prevent misuse and overprescription of opioids. They allowed people to come into their stores with multiple prescriptions for multiple drugs and did not notify anyone when the numbers didn’t add up. 

When the pharmacies knew they were handling addictive substances, they didn’t have any checks and balances to prevent fraud or doctor shopping. In this activity, an addicted person uses multiple doctors to get more than one prescription for addictive drugs like opioids. 

Opioid Lawsuits and The OPLA

The Ohio Supreme Court said the OPLA, updated in 2007, doesn’t allow public nuisance claims for the sale of products. Justice Joseph T. Deters explained the law covers any claims about products, even if they aren’t defective.

The counties argued that the OPLA only applies to lawsuits asking for payment for damages caused by harmful products. They said their claims were different because they wanted money to help fix the opioid crisis, not to pay for specific damages.

However, Justice Deters said the law requires any product-related claims, including public nuisance claims, to follow the OPLA. Justice Melody Stewart disagreed with part of the Ohio Supreme Court decision. She said the counties’ claims did not fall under the OPLA because they were not asking for money to pay for damages. Instead, they wanted funds to help treat the problems caused by opioids. Justice Michael P. Donnelly supported her view.

Other judges in the court agreed with him, but one judge, Justice Patrick F. Fischer, agreed only with the final decision, not the full explanation.

Why This Outcome Matters

States and cities have been using any means necessary to hold pharmaceutical companies, marketers, and pharmacies to take responsibility for their roles in the opioids epidemic, especially when it came to Oxycontin. In many states, “pill mills” operated in plain sight.

Now states will need to try other creative ideas for holding pharmacies accountable.

Getting Help for Addiction

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