Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that she had filed “the most comprehensive lawsuit in the country” against the largest manufacturers and distributors of opioids, blaming them for creating an opioid crisis that has killed more than 10,000 Floridians.
Flanked by police, firefighters and families of opioid victims, Bondi said she wanted “billions” from the companies, which she said misled patients about addictive drugs and ignored people who were ordering suspicious amounts of them.
“It’s time the defendants pay for the pain and the destruction that they have caused,” Bondi said.
The lawsuit targets some of the largest drug makers in the country, including Purdue Pharma, the creator of the opioids OxyContin and Dilaudid; Endo Pharmaceuticals, which makes the drugs Percocet and Opana; and Johnson & Johnson and some of its subsidiaries, which make the drugs Duragesic and Tapentadol.
Distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson also “failed to report suspicious orders while knowing these customers were filling an inordinate number of prescriptions,” the lawsuit alleges.
Bondi said that the companies behind these drugs also created “front groups” that promoted and marketed opioids. She held up literature from these groups that she said was full of misinformation and downplayed the addictive nature of the substances.
For example, in “Treatment Options: A Guide for People Living with Pain,” the authors alleged that “despite their great benefits, opioids are often underused” because “heathcare providers may be afraid to prescribe them, and patients may be afraid to take them.”
The long-awaited lawsuit, filed in Pasco County before Circuit Judge Declan Manfield, seeks to recoup the costs for victims and for cities and counties that have spent millions fighting the crisis.
It is an epidemic that Bondi said is indiscriminate in its impact, from the elderly and active teenagers to pregnant mothers and the infants born to them.
“Instead of milk, these babies were coming into the world getting morphine or methadone,” she said.
The suit alleges that the companies violated the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, the Florida RICO Act and common law public nuisance. Distributors were also negligent, according to the suit.
The complaint lays out the common narrative about the modern opioid crisis, told over the last two decades by journalists, federal authorities and lawyers: Companies pushed highly addictive pills onto the public without telling people how harmful they were. Many of those people became addicted, and some turned to heroin when they couldn’t get pills.
Drug companies aggressively sold their opioids, downplaying how addictive they were and paying “medical professionals” to “endorse and promote the use of opioids,” Bondi’s complaint states. The complaint calls them “key opinion leaders,” or “KOLs.”
Those “key opinion leaders” were paid by the companies to speak at conferences, given consulting fees, travel and lodging expenses, and food and beverage expenses as long as they touted opioids for chronic pain relief.
According to the suit, the companies paid “front organizations” that portrayed themselves as objective advocates for patients or responsible professional associations that provided misleading claims that opioids were safe without disclosing any of the risks.
Drug distributors violated their duty by shipping hundreds of millions of opioids into Florida without “sounding the alarm or stopping the shipments,” the lawsuit states.
The complaint notes that a single pharmacy in Hudson, a Pasco County town of 34,000 people, purchased 2.2 million opioid pills in 2011 alone — 64 pills for every resident.
A spokesman for Purdue Pharma said they “vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the opportunity to present our defense.”
“We are disappointed that after months of good faith negotiations working toward a meaningful resolution to help the state of Florida address the opioid crisis, the attorney general has unilaterally decided to pursue a costly and protracted litigation process,” the spokesman said in a statement.
The case promises to be one of the largest lawsuits filed on behalf of Floridians, ranking alongside the multibillion-dollar Big Tobacco case of the 1990s and the 2010 BP oil spill.
But Bondi has been repeatedly criticized for taking so long to file. Already, hundreds of cities, counties and states have filed lawsuits against the same companies.
After Bondi’s announcement Tuesday, Democratic candidates applauded the filing but criticized the timing.
“I’m glad they are finally taking this long overdue step but remain disappointed it took them so long to do so,” said Gwen Graham, a Democratic candidate for governor.
State Rep. Sean Shaw, D-Tampa, who is running for attorney general, said, “It is disheartening that it took eight years of warnings, thousands of unnecessary deaths, and for her time in office to be coming to an end for Attorney General Bondi to finally acknowledge that Floridians have been facing an overwhelming opioid crisis.”
Shaw’s competitor in the Democratic primary, Tampa attorney Ryan Torrens, said the question Floridians should be asking is, “What took so long?”
Bondi said it’s taken this long to put together a compelling, comprehensive case.
Some lawyers said they did not apply to represent the state, citing an 8-year-old state law that caps contingency fees for lawyers hired by the attorney general at $50 million.
But Bondi said she had no trouble finding top attorneys. Of 52 firms that she said applied, Bondi settled on a team that includes local and out-of-state law firms, including attorneys Drake Martin and Rich Newsome, which handled, respectively, the BP oil spill and the Takata air bag case.
Bondi said she intentionally was not involved in the first round of selecting the lawyers but personally interviewed each of the finalists.
Bondi’s announcement was coordinated with attorneys general of Nevada, Texas, North Carolina, North Dakota and Tennessee, which also filed lawsuits Tuesday, according to Reuters.
Joining Bondi at Riverside Recovery of Tampa, a drug rehabilitation center, were Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Agriculture Commissioner and GOP gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam.
Bondi acknowledged that a settlement was likely. She could not say what the state is seeking in damages, but prophesied it would be in the “millions — billions, probably.”
She said she does not expect leaders at any of these companies to face jail time.
“I wish I could send someone to jail, but I can’t,” she said. “So we’re going after them financially.”
There were more than 3,000 opioid-related deaths in Florida last year and 2,000 deaths directly attributed to the drugs, a 27 percent increase from 2016, according to the preliminary findings of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Medical Examiners Commission.
Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco called the companies “drug dealers” that were “pushing pills,” and he said that lawyers should go after the families that have profited.
The family that owns the company that makes OxyContin, for example, is one of the nation’s richest and has become one of the biggest donors to the nation’s top museums.
“Freeze all the assets of these companies,” Nocco said. “Freeze all the assets of the families benefiting from all this.”
Florida was one of the last states to implement a PMP program (E-FORCSE) in 2009… So all the data that would have indicated a large quantity of prescription opiates where being distributed throughout Florida.. From what I have heard.. there was a substantial increase in new pharmacy permits issued… so where was the Board of Pharmacy ?
The DEA had reports from the pharmacy wholesalers about the meds and amounts that were being sold in FL- so where was the DEA ?
When a prescription opiate is no longer in the possession of the person to whom it was prescribed.. it AUTOMATICALLY becomes an ILLEGAL OPIATE. How many people getting opiate Rx in FL from these “pill mills” where really drug diverters ?
If there was a mechanism in place to validate who the person really was that was going to these pill mills and getting opiate/controlled substance prescriptions filled… there bank accounts or assets could have been tracked to see if they were substance abusers or just in the business of diverting controlled substances.
Bondi talks about “chronic pain pts” and these opiates and if you read some of the literature and other information around these meds… low addiction is typically mentioned in treating chronic pain… which everyone who is paying attention … knows that is the truth. It is medically inappropriate to prescribe long acting meds for acute pain.
Purdue Pharma is a private corporation so Bondi states that she is going to go after the family’s assets. All of the original family members who controlled the corporation during the “pill mill ” period are no longer living.
There are other corporations that have produce/sold opiates/controlled substances but they are all publicly held corporations and because of that …she can’t go after the stock holders assets.
I just wonder how many millions or hundred of millions of “profits” that were made by the people whose “business plan” was to make a profit by diverting these meds, but Bondi and these other state’s attorney general knows that there was millions made and it would take too much effort/expenses in trying to find these people…. probably because most used fake names and fake ID’s
But this is just typical of how our legal system and the attorney profession functions
