A few weeks ago, Johnson & Johnson had been sentenced to $ 572 million for unlawful commercialization of addictive painkillers in the US state of Oklahoma. In another important court case, the pharmaceutical company has now turned a verdict by a settlement.
With two districts in the state of Ohio, they have agreed on payments totaling $ 20.4 million, the company said. Johnson & Johnson acquires it at the federal level in the first US trial. The group did not have to admit liability, but faces numerous similar US lawsuits.
With Mallinckrodt, Endo International and Allergan, three other pharmaceutical companies had previously prevented comparisons of being blamed in the trial. They are all suspected of having contributed to the rampant drug dependence and drug epidemic in the US with the marketing of painkillers.
Read here : How heroin destroys the American middle class
In the US, over 400,000 people have died of an overdose in recent years. In 2018, the number of drug-related deaths in the United States had dropped for the first time in two decades. According to US health authorities, around 68,600 people died of an overdose in 2018, and in 2017 there were approximately 72,200 deaths. In particular, the company Purdue Pharma - known as the manufacturer of the infamous painkiller Oxycontin - was advised because of the addiction problem in the criticism.
The settlement with Johnson & Johnson will be less than three weeks before the start of proceedings on October 21 at Cleveland County Court. Under the agreement, the consumer products company, which also distributes drugs, will pay ten million dollars to the Cuyahoga and Summit districts: $ 5 million in legal costs and expenditures and $ 5.4 million to nonprofit organizations fighting the opioid crisis.