The Oklahoma State Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned the decision to charge pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson $ 465 million for its role in the opioid crisis.
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In 2019, a judge ordered the company to pay this sum to finance programs for a year to remedy the opioid crisis, which has caused more than 500,000 deaths from overdoses in 20 years in the United States. He then based his judgment on the law against public nuisances, believing that the company had adopted
"deceptive marketing and promotion of opiates" practices.
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At the time, it was the first civil judgment against a laboratory in the United States linked to opiates.
The State initially claimed some 17 billion dollars of defrayal corresponding to 20 years of financing of these programs.
On appeal, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the judge should not have relied on the public nuisance law to condemn J & J's manufacturing, marketing and sales practices and overturned his decision.
Excessive promotion
J&J, like other companies including Purdue, maker of OxyContin, and major US drug distributors, are accused of over-promoting their pain-relieving drugs from 1996 onwards, causing a drug crisis. addiction causing an explosion of overdoses.
Distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, as well as J&J, agreed in late July to pay $ 26 billion to settle thousands of disputes related to the opioid crisis.
The laboratory confirmed in June that it had stopped the production and sale of these substances.
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The Purdue laboratory, for its part, went bankrupt and agreed to pay $ 4.5 billion to the victims and affected institutions in exchange for a certain civil immunity for its owners, the Sackler family.
This process is still ongoing.