Oklahoma Attorney General Dismisses Some Claims Against Opioid Makers -- Update

By Allison Prang

The office of Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter has dismissed claims against a host of pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. and Purdue Pharma, in order to focus on the public nuisance claim it has against the opioid manufacturers.

Mr. Hunter's office said in an announcement Thursday that it dismissed these claims "during another hearing where defendants were tying up the court and the state's attorneys with a blizzard of pretrial motions."

The office said that its remaining public nuisance claim "provides the state with a comprehensive plan to address and remediate the effects the opioid crisis continues to have" across the state.

"The defendants in this case have tried in every way imaginable to derail our trial date," Mr. Hunter said in prepared remarks, adding that "moving forward with the state's public nuisance claim moots most of the issues raised by the defendants in discovery, allowing the parties and the judge to focus on preparing for this trial."

The trial is still scheduled to start May 28, it said.

The office also said that dismissing the claims now doesn't prevent it from reasserting them later. The dismissal also doesn't change the amount of damages the state is seeking.

Last month, Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, agreed to pay $270 million to resolve a lawsuit filed by Oklahoma. The majority of the settlement is expected to go toward funding a national opioid addiction center.

Purdue and other companies face more than 1,600 lawsuits from various cities, counties and states accusing them of helping fuel the nation's opioid crisis through aggressive marketing of opioids. Individual Sackler family members have been named in a few dozen of the suits in an attempt to hold the family personally liable and tap into their wealth.

(Jared S. Hopkins and Sara Randazzo contributed to this article.)

Write to Allison Prang at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 05, 2019 12:10 ET (16:10 GMT)

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